Congratulations, Dr Rukmini Banerji and the entire team at Pratham Education Foundation.

Dr Rukmini Banerji, is the 2021 Yidan Prize for Education Development Laureate. She leads a team at Pratham Education Foundation in India, with a clear mission: “Every child in school and learning well”. A reminder that we need to focus on education quality as well as school enrolments. The solutions that Pratham has developed and deployed towards this goal have proven to be cost-effective and scalable with a demonstrated potential to impact globally—disruptive education innovation with transformative results.

There is evidence that well over 50 percent of school age children, do not have the basic literacy and math skills that would allow them to benefit from additional years of schooling. Employment also becomes more difficult. This structural inefficiency is one of the most challenging problems in education. It undermines children’s confidence in their potential with long term impacts on their lives. Numbers are higher for children in low-resourced and rural contexts, and the pandemic is expected to widen the gaps. The Global Alliance to Monitor Learning uses the term ‘Learning Poverty’—the inability of a child to read and understand a text by the time they are 10 years old. They use this to assess the extent of the problem. Current estimates are that hundreds of millions more children could suffer from pandemic related learning poverty if remedial action is not taken. Unfortunately, there are major data gaps. For example, there is no learning data for more than half of school age children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Since 2005, Pratham has developed inclusive community-centric techniques to collect reliable and actionable evidence relating to enrolment and basic learning outcomes of children in rural India. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is a learning assessment for elementary schools that now takes place every two years. Conducted as a household survey, it is a massive undertaking involving a network of district-level organizations and tens of thousands of volunteers. It is designed to generate district, state, and national level estimates of children’s schooling status for all children between ages 3-16. The involvement of parents in this exercise revises notions of whose voices count when collecting and analyzing evidence. People who may be illiterate themselves have the opportunity to give feedback on how their children are educated.

The early findings from ASER gave the team at Pratham a better idea of the nature of the problem in India. They then engaged in a deliberate research and testing process to find a solution. The result is ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ (TaRL), which directly addresses the structures that make it difficult for some children to acquire foundational skills. As the team at Pratham explains, the approach works by dividing children (generally in Grade 3 to 5) into groups based on learning needs rather than age or grade; dedicating time to basic skills rather than focusing solely on the curriculum; and regularly assessing student performance, rather than relying only on end-of-year examinations. Application of TaRL in the classroom is an iterative process that incorporates continuous improvements. Deliberate randomized trials also help monitor the actual impact of the tool on teaching and learning. The evidence shows that TaRL consistently improves learning outcomes.

As the adoption of ASER and TaRL spreads globally, credit must go to Dr Banerji’s exceptional managerial and academic research skills. Her conviction and creativity, and that of her team demonstrate the value of constructive questioning and evidence-based decision making. Important lessons and approaches that we must take into account as we reimagine our education systems in a way that will address both old and new challenges.