What We Do
The school enrolment in India is inching towards the target of universal coverage, but around half the children drop out of schools before completing grade five. Various studies have revealed that a large proportion of children in grades four and five can not read with comprehension even a simple paragraph in their first language, or perform simple arithmetic operations with two digits. This is true for not only relatively backward states like UP and Bihar, but also Southern States and Gujarat. Such children would revert to illiteracy within a couple of years of leaving schools. Therefore, around half of adult India could remain functionally illiterate even in 2025-2030 if the present trends continue.
The founder, Prof. Pankaj Jain, got an opportunity to be a member of terminal review mission of Andhra Pradesh Primary education Project (APPEP), a British funded program to improve quality in Govt. schools in Andhra Pradesh, India, over early 90s, as a member of Leeds University team. This review revealed that a well designed, funded and implemented program, APPEP, failed to make significant impact in improving learning levels.
Develop and implement institutional solutions to provide low cost but assured high quality basic education to children from poor urban and rural families which do not deteriorate on large scale replication.
Contribute to changes in policy and programs that institutionalize accountability to deliver quality education to target group children, at a socially affordable cost.
This module covers the social/environmental studies component of national/state curriculum for the relevant grades-classes, but in addition, this is meant to serve two purposes. First, the design and pedagogy of this module is meant to provide opportunities to children to learn by discovery method, to experience the ‘process part of learning’, besides acquiring the ‘product-knowledge’ per se.
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Computers aided learning (CAL) Program
In 2002, Media Lab-Asia (ML-A) was launched in India as a partnership between the Government of India and MIT, USA. ML-A was set up to promote joint research programs in technology sectors between MIT and Indian entities. The Computer Aided Learning (CAL) Program of GS, to be co-designed and implemented through its sister trust, Development…
Government School
Partnership to improve quality in Government Schools Taking note of GyanShala’s success in ensuring high lerning levels in its own managed classes, the government invited GS to start a pilot quality improvement program in a representative sample of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) Schools over 2007-11. A set of 23 schools were randomly chosen for implementing…