Supporting children to ‘Leap Forward’ through early years

Project funding

Supported by the Yidan Prize project funds

Education theme

Foundational learning

Social emotional learning

Contents

Overview

Background

About the idea

Impact and results

Stories

More to explore

Strengthening, scaling, and supporting Pratham’s work with governments, communities, and parents to offer children quality early education.

500,000

children reached through Pratham's work

490,000

children reached through state governments of Punjab and Karnataka

7,000

children reached through direct work with 300 communities in Delhi

Data above as of June 2023

 

Quality early learning builds strong foundations — reducing the need to intervene and help children catch up down the road. ‘Leap Forward’ is Pratham’s early years strategy to support young children and their parents in India so the next generation can get the fair start they deserve in education.

Laureate(s)
Dr Rukmini Banerji

CEO, Pratham Education Foundation

Background

Children thrive on quality early years education — but some miss out on foundational skills

Learning is cumulative. And foundational skills such as basic literacy and numeracy are critical building blocks for future learning. Over the past 25 years, Pratham has been helping children catch up on math and literacy. Pratham’s ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ work has demonstrated that all children can learn to read and master basic numeracy in as little as 30–50 days.

 

If children miss out early on these foundational skills, they risk falling into a learning gap as the curriculum gets tougher. Even when children continue in school, they don’t progress at the expected pace. If they can’t achieve basic literacy and numeracy by the end of Grade 2 or the beginning of Grade 3, more schooling won’t automatically lead to further learning. And children are left believing that they can’t learn or that they aren’t good enough.

 

‘Leap Forward’ focuses on building those early skills — especially post-pandemic

Before the pandemic only about 30% of children in India who reached Grade 3 (eight years old) had an adequate level of foundational skills. In this context, the impact of Covid-19 — school closures and learning losses — was all the more devastating. The 2022 Annual Status of Education Report shows that in India, children’s basic reading ability has dropped to pre-2012 levels, reversing the gradual improvement achieved in the intervening years.

 

Pratham’s ‘Leap Forward’ strategy for early years aims to significantly limit the need for catch-up with children, by building strong foundations for future learning. The ultimate goal is to support important progress in India and potentially other countries.

About the idea

Low-cost, scalable programs rooted in community engagement

Pratham found that when children experience similar teaching methods from pre-primary school to grades 1–2, this continuity helps them move more confidently to formal school, building a strong learning foundation. They call this a continuum model.

 

Pratham’s programs for young children are designed to adapt to different contexts and make the most of available resources. They focus on simple implementation of a play-based approach — engaging community volunteers to teach children in small groups. In return, the volunteers receive training opportunities on topics of relevance and interest such as digital readiness and hospitality through Pratham’s ‘Education for Education’ (EFE) courses.

 

They also focus on broader community engagement. These include keeping in touch with mothers by sending play-based learning materials through texts and online messaging, and building links between communities and schools through events like school readiness fairs.

 

Through demonstrating teaching and learning models with continuous advocacy, Pratham engages governments at state and district levels to enable scaling through system adoption. The team supports teachers and school leaders to use existing resources such as teaching and learning materials through training, and oversees implementation in the classroom, sharing feedback with governments.

 

Finally, they keep a firm focus on robust assessment and evaluation so that everything they do is evidence-based and effective. And with that body of resources, they can help strengthen and support larger government systems to make quality early years education more widespread in India.

 

Pratham is using prize funds to strengthen and scale the ‘Leap Forward’ strategy in four areas

Firstly, they’re focusing on bolstering their central leadership and support teams to build up their continuum model and create a package of content and activities used across the early years.

 

They’re also scaling up the impact of their existing programs — particularly the Anganwadi programs (supporting government-run early childhood centers), pre-schools, and pre-primary classes. Through these programs, Pratham reaches mothers, community volunteers, and Anganwadi workers to train them in engaging with children through play-based learning.

 

Pratham also works closely with local and regional governments, so their third area of focus is strengthening government systems’ capacity to develop robust early years curricula, and training teachers and Anganwadi workers to teach and carry out assessments.

 

Finally, they’re creating more free, publicly accessible original content — stories, texts, toys, and games in digital and print formats — and making it available in local languages. They’re particularly keen to support underserved communities in India who have lacked the same wealth of quality learning resources in their mother tongue.

Our 2021 laureate Dr Rukmini Banerji is using her project funds to support Pratham’s ‘Leap Forward’ strategy and programs from January 2022 to December 2024.

Impact and results

In 2022, Pratham’s early years programs directly reached over 40,000 children and 1,062 mothers across 1,259 Anganwadis in Delhi, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, sharing learning materials and teaching resources with Anganwadi workers and mothers.

 

Pratham also worked with the Women and Child Development Department in Karnataka and the Department of Education in Punjab, supporting 132,904 children across 8,640 Anganwadis in five districts of Karnataka* and 354,290 children across 12,855 pre-schools in Punjab.

 

Storytelling is central to Pratham’s early years programs supporting children’s learning and language acquisition. To expand their library of stories, Pratham ran story writing workshops within their teams and with governments across states and in different languages. They commissioned authors to write shorts stories for children in specific languages to ensure every child can see themselves and their local languages and culture represented in a story. In 2022, the team developed 404 original stories in print, out of which 147 were also recorded as audio stories.

 

*Pratham’s Anganwadis support program with the Women and Child Development Department in Karnataka is partially supported by the Yidan Prize project funds.

Stories

Dimpi, Age 8, New Delhi, Delhi

Dimpi joined a Pratham-supported Anganwadi in 2018. Three-year old Dimpi was extremely shy and did not interact with her peers or take part in classroom activities. Dimpi’s mother had to accompany her at the Anganwadi for her stay and take part in the activities.

 

However, as the days passed, Dimpi slowly started building interest in Pratham’s activities. She started interacting with other children in the Anganwadi, and quickly made friends. She now enjoys all play-based activities conducted at the Anganwadi.

 

Dimpi has a younger sister named Gunni, who also has now joined the Anganwadi. Both sisters perform the activities shared with their parents through the Ghar Aaangan Mein Khel Khel Mein remote initiative. Their mother is excited and has enthusiastically taken up the idea of teaching children using household items and has also come to understand the importance of holistic development.

Nagamma M, Anganwadi teacher, Mysore, Karnataka

Nagamma has been an Anganwadi worker since 2007. Nagamma is a dedicated and diligent teacher whose work has been recognized by officials in her community in more ways than one. She enthusiastically participates in community training and has a great grasp on pre-school activities and Pratham’s teaching and learning materials. She has been commended by Anganwadi supervisors and child development project officers both during training and in the classroom. Now she also prepares her own teaching and learning materials.

 

Anganwadis in Nanjangud face challenges of low attendance and decreasing enrolment as an increasing number of people prefer to send their children to private schools instead.

 

However, in November 2022, recognizing Nagamma’s efforts, the Gram Panchayat installed a smart television within the classroom of her Anganwadi in Nanjangud. Now Nagamma uses digital content to supplement children’s learning, alongside the five skill activities she is trained on through Pratham’s support. Community members and children were equally excited by the new television in the classroom. Nagamma thanked Pratham for their support over the years in building her confidence in pre-school content and activities which helped her secure new resources for her Anganwadi.