Programs

GyanShala evolves, implement and continually upgrade model school programs that meet the following five criteria:

Meet the needs of our target group; 95% of Indian children, who belong to poor and low income, local language (not English) speaking families. .
Ensure learning outcome of target group children to match that of the children studying in elite, mostly English medium, private schools.
Works on scale and is functionally sustainable by relying on widely available human resource, and knowledge base.
Provide good-best value of money for funders of education program.
Must complement and support the overall public and private school system to provide quality education to the target group.

The first two criteria require Gyan Shala program to incorporate best known curriculum design and practices, including pedagogy. The third required the programs to follow lessons of management from excellent large organizations. The fourth requires attaining high level of cost-efficiency, while meeting all functional needs, and the last required the programs to rely on high quality school sector analysis to understand critical gaps in the school education sectors in India, that need to be filled up.

The economic and policy logic of Gyan Shala programs have been discussed and debated in India’s leading economic and policy journal, Economic & Political Weekly, and its program design has been analyzed in leading professional journals of ‘World Development’, “Oxford Education Journal’, and California Management Review, indicating professional due-diligence of program design-policies of very high order. Over years, Gyan Shala has designed-implemented the following programs,

Elementary Program (Covering grades 1-3) (in Urban Slums and rural areasl)
Middle School Program (Covering grades 4-7)
High School Program (Covering grades 8-10)
Program for Adolescent Girls
Computer Assisted learning (CAL) program
Partnership to improve quality in Government Schools
Public Private Partnership(PPP) in the management of Govt. schools
Evidence based policy analysis and advocacy

Future Plans/ Aspirations

Continually upgrading-expanding above programs to even better quality and sustainability, and arranging sustainable financing on behalf of poor children.
Setting up low cost chain of fee paying high quality schools for low income group.
Being a part of PPP management of a large chain of Government Schools, which demonstrate a solution-path for large scale improvements in Government School system.

Elementary Program

GyanShala starts this program in such slums where it finds lots of young children loitering in streets during regular school timing, which is taken as a more effective evidence of children dropping out of school system compared to any formal survey which might or might not show universal enrollment. GyanShala program is run like any formal school, except that various grade classes are not held in a same building, and are instead held in nearby rooms hired within the community where children live. This ensured that the parents had no hesitation in sending even a girl child to the school, and there was no cost of commute to school, either of time or transport cost.

This program was designed to lay strong foundation stage of school cycle, which would facilitate higher retention/ continuation and success in later years of schooling. The program admitted children of age group 5-6 years in grade 1, and enabled them to acquire the terminal competencies of grade 3 State curriculum in 3 years, even if they had no pre-schooling.

Main features:

Classrooms nearby homes/ communities
Curriculum content made suitable to the child’s natural learning style
Pedagogical approaches learnt from the successful examples across India- World and also from pedagogy experts and adapted for the needs of the children
Use of human resources available locally and easily at each level
Regular training of all categories of the staff
Systemic planning for organized support to teachers and children in the form of weekly senior teacher visit

Subjects covered and class transaction methodology adopted:

Initially, the Program had three major subject streams, namely Local Language (Gujarati, Hindi, Bangla etc.), Math, and Project work. The latter covered the environmental/ social studies module of the state/national curriculum, but more importantly, it helped the children to learn how to learn independently. This module gave opportunities to practice, refine, and develop some skills that Howard Gardner refers as Multiple Intelligences.

In addition to above three subjects, English is also introduced as a second language, as the parents shared their concerns for the same.

Gyan Shala considered the class-time to be the most important resource of any school system, and placed maximum emphasis on its optimal utilization, as the major instrument for children to learn well. The school time was divided into activities-periods of 15-20 minutes to match typical attention span of small children, with language and math related activities claiming around 60 per cent of class time. GS integrated extra-curricular activities in the daily class schedule, and allocated these a space comparable to individual math, language or project modules.

Once every year, children in one class location stage a 2-3 hour cultural event for which they invite elders from their community. That gave an opportunity to each child in GS to perform in public.

The program followed the State curriculum, while pedagogy placed emphasis on children doing individual and group work each day in the class under teacher supervision. Supply of high quality learning material was given large importance, with each child getting to work on one page worksheet each day for each subject stream. Teacher spent around 20% of class time in full class teaching-exposition, and 30 % on individual attention to each child. The remaining time was given to group teaching-tuition, and supervision of group work by children.

Classroom organization and mainstreaming

Classrooms had furniture, suitable for children, and functional lighting and ventilation. The State-national curriculum was fully implemented so children could transfer to any other regular government or private school into the next grade class on completion of any grade education in GyanShala. Class duration was kept 3.5 hours, without any break (children are allowed to have individual break for either drinking water or attending natural requirement on an individual basis as per their needs, so as to avoid academic time loss of the group.) Classes were held for a minimum of 220 days in an academic year. Our reviews have shown that the number of hours of class-time devoted to the core subjects of language, math and pre-science/ math/ EVS was comparable to most full day schools, as there are no breaks or intermission in 3-5 hours of class or organized extra-curricular activities. On completion of three years elementary module, most children were mainstreamed in regular schools in grade 4, except for a small group in Ahmedabad who continued in grade 4 GyanShala classes, who were mainstreamed in higher grade classes later in recognized schools, according to the preference of children-parents, using the provisions under the Right to Education (RTE) act.

The children mostly received free education, including free supply of stationary and books, and other learning material. An attempt was made to secure part financial support of the Government through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which also enabled the supply of mid-day meal.

Profile of Teachers and Training

The educational support to the children was delivered by a 6 tier academic team. The class teachers are recruited from the community so they were comfortable in working in poor community setting. Typical students-teacher ratio was around 25 across the grades. The class teachers for grade 1-3 were required to have passed higher secondary, though many young graduates too took up the job. One senior teacher was engaged to supervise every 8-10 classes, who had a minimum of graduate education. The teachers-teams are supported by a two tier team of curriculum designers and teacher trainers for various subject streams. A group of senior supervisors takes care of administrative aspects in the field and insulated educational processes from other disturbances. Teacher training was given large resource support and management attention, which comprised of ’12 days orientation training at the start of teacher-role, supplementary training of one day each month and 4-5 days during festival break. Every year, 8-10 days refresher training was organized during summer break. Weekly visit of senior teacher to each class also acted as teacher-training cum demonstration exercise.

Background of the children:

Towards the end of 2015-16, around 43,000 children studied in around 1688 classes in various slums in nine cities across 4 states. Typically, one parent was functionally illiterate and almost all were daily wage laborer or employed in informal sector. It was typical for children to contribute to the running of household, or its economy, after they cross ten years of age. The proportion of girls and boys in GyanShala remained almost equal and minority representation exceeded their proportion in the populations-geographies served.

In 2015-16, the number of classes and children at various locations were as under.

SN	Location	Centers	Children	Boys	Girls
1	Ahmedabad	344	7659	3749	3910
2	Surat	77	1709	828	881
3	Patna	477	13033	5845	7188
4	Muzaffarpur	195	5089	2302	2787
5	Bihar Sharif	95	2508	1153	1355
6	Kolkata	74	2026	1004	1022
7	Lucknow	147	3778	1787	1991
8	Kanpur	155	4106	1898	2208
9	Farukhabad	124	3245	1596	1649
	Total	1688	43153	20162	22991

Assessment

The program team conducted two written and two oral assessments in each grade to assess children’s progress and plan remedial-corrective steps. These records are kept along with monthly attendance of all children. Independent assessment of children’s performance was conducted by Educational Initiative for the cohort completing grade 3, using ASSET test, to provide feedback about the performance in comparison to other, mostly elite, schools of India taking ASSET test.

Gyan Shala ASSET (by EI) summary (Ahmedabad Program), Gyan Shala score in red, while Asset average is in red print.
Language	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Grade 3	480(500)	NT	NT	NT	NT
Grade 5	490(500)	410(520)	450(510)	410(500)	380(510)
Grade 7	NT	400 (520)	480 (500)	450(500)	430(510)
Math	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Grade 3	530(490)	450(500)	440(500)	550(500)	560(490)
Grade 5	500(500)	410(500)	390(500)	410(500)	400(510)
Grade 7	NT	420(500)	430(500)	410(500)	400(510)
EVS	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Grade 3	NT	420(510)	460(500)	550(500)	580(490)
Grade 5	NT	420(500)	390 (500)	420(500)	420 (500)
Grade 7	NT	410(500)	430(500)	420(500)	420(500)

Rural elementary programs in Gujarat

In the wake of severe damage to school infrastructure by the Gujarat Earthquake in 2001, GS started its grades 1-3 classes in two taluka/blocks of Surendranagar district, Dhragandhra and Patdi, bordering the little Runn of Kutchh. The program had around 2000 children in 60 classes in 20 villages.

Most government school building got repaired, and these started functioning in all villages by the end of 2003, but the local villagers found the quality of GS schools much better, and wanted these to continue, so the program continued for four years. The program had to close due to funding and regulatory constraints.

The rural program performed as well as the urban program in terms of children’s learning. The only area of difference was among teachers, who were mostly women in urban areas, but almost all male in rural areas. We could not get educated girls in the villages who were willing to teach poor children. In terms of unit cost too, the two program components came on par.

In 2002-03, Yuva Shakti (Jan-Vikas) approached Gyan Shala to support their education initiatives in Halol taluka of Panchmahal district to build communal harmony, after riots of 2002. For four years, 52 classes were supported academically by Gyan Shala by but managed Yuva Shakti.

Middle School Program in Ahmedabad

After stabilizing its elementary program through three annual review and redesign of various program components, GS started middle school program in 2005-06 on a small scale. This had grown to 85 grades 4-7 classes with an enrolment of 2000 children, in 2015-16.

GS management recognizes that evolving middle school program poses greatest design and management challenges, since this program covered the (i) the initiation of formation of most concepts in human/ child’s mind, (ii) transition of a child into adolescence, whose consequences are difficult to deal with without quality parental support, and (iii) using teachers from human resource pool from a broken down university system, whose students simply have not learned the process of self-learning and core subject expertise.

The first challenge requires teachers to have subject expertise of significant depth, which most individuals cannot be expected to have in many subject streams, spanning language-math-science-social studies. This program, therefore, needed specialist subject teachers for each stream, while in elementary stage, one class teacher could oversee and facilitate the learning tasks in all the subject streams. Further, the learning tasks in elementary program could be handled by teachers with grade XII education, but middle school teachers required greater depth of subject knowledge, requiring graduate level education, and specialization in one particular subject. A minimum of 4-5 teachers taught in each middle school class. The third challenge required the program to invest in teacher training much more than in the elementary program, and building high quality conceptual foundation among the teacher trainers, who could help teachers to overcome the gaps in their university education to certain extent. Building high quality conceptual foundation among teacher training, in turn, required building a learning culture in the curriculum design cum teacher training team, which had to be of much higher order than of elementary team. In addition to annual training, the teachers were provided training session with the curriculum design team every fortnight. There was no position/ role of a senior teacher, but like the elementary program, the classes were held in a room close to children’s home, which had the required class facilities and furniture for each child.

Another secondary stages. But, unfortunately, the household responsibility of most children does not permit them to devote any more than 4.5 hours of class time to their studies, with other time spent on supporting their household’s economy.

As yet, Gyan Shala has not discovered an effective mix of large scale financing of the middle school program. There is no Govt. scheme under which this program could be supported even by sympathetic officers. We charge Rs. 150/- per month from the parents, which is close to the top of the paying capacity of poor parents that Gyan Shala serves, but it amounts to only 25% of program cost. No child, though, is denied education in case of inability to pay. The donor support is also deterred by the perception that this program might be violating RTE provisions which it does not.

In 2015-16, the middle school program had classes covering 2000 children, as per details in the following Table 2.

Grades	Centres	Children	Boys	Girls
STD 4	25	659	315	344
STD 5	26	636	294	342
STD 6	20	415	187	228
STD 7	14	311	154	157
TOTAL	85	2021	950	1071

Rural elementary programs in Gujarat

Middle School Program in Ahmedabad

GS management recognizes that evolving middle school program poses greatest design and management challenges, since this program covered the (i) the initiation of formation of most concepts in human / child’s mind, (ii) transition of a child into adolescence, whose consequences are difficult to deal with without quality parental support, and (iii) using teachers from human resource pool from a broken down university system, whose students simply have not learned the process of self-learning and core subject expertise.

arher secondary stages. But, unfortunately, the household responsibility of most children does not permit them to devote any more than 4.5 hours of class time to their studies, with other time spent on supporting their household’s economy.

In 2015-16, the middle school program had classes covering 2000 children, as per details in the following Table 2.

Grades	Centres	Children	Boys	Girls
STD 4	25	659	315	344
STD 5	26	636	294	342
STD 6	20	415	187	228
STD 7	14	311	154	157
TOTAL	85	2021	950	1071

Main Features:

• Classrooms nearby homes / communities, so allowing more girls of teen age to continue studies.
• Curriculum content made suitable to the child’s natural learning style.
• Pedagogical approaches learnt from the successful examples across India- World and also from pedagogy experts and adapted for the needs of the children
• Use of human resources available locally and easily at each level
• Regular (fortnightly) extensive training of all categories of the staff
• Subject specific grade wise teachers

The summary of ASSET test results for grades 5 and 7 are indicated in the tables in the earlier section on elementary program.

High School Program

Gyan Shala noticed that most parents in the slums are extremely reluctant to send teen-aged and adolescent girls to distant schools at high school stage. Further, household demands to contribute to family’s economy makes it difficult for the adolescent boys also to find time for a full day high school. Gyan Shala has, therefore, launched its High School program in 2011-12, under the provision of open Schooling, which enables a flexible duration study program close to the residence of children. The educational goals of high school program, however, have not been diluted and we are targeting that this program too would generate children’s performance on par with India’s leading schools, thus opening the possibilities of professional education and future life trajectory for Gyan Shala children coming from poor families. The program adopts State curriculum goals and is structured similar to middle school program, with three differences. First, the education and quality of teacher support in high school is upgraded. Second, High School program places much larger emphasis on doing well in the formal Board examination, which, at present juncture, places considerable emphasis on memorization and procedural, different from conceptual, understanding which is emphasized upto middle school program in GyanShala. Third, High School program has a special provision for children who are not coming from Gyan Shala middle school program. We have noted that the standard of education in most Government or private schools will be much lower than in Gyan Shala grade 8. So, the children studying in grade 8 in such schools, who are to be admitted in Gyan Shala in grades 9 and 10, are provided tutorial assistance, along with their studies in grade 8 in their old school, so they are better prepared to join grade 9 in Gyan Shala.

In the year 2014-15, the second batch of the students took the Board Exams for Grade 10. Out of 55 students, 41 students passed the test, which shows 74.54 percentage of students passing. In the same year, in the state of Gujarat, for all the students, percentage was only 55. Thus, passing percentage of GyanShala is worthy of appreciation, as the program deals with all lower socio-economic strata of the population compared to the state. While comparing the same with the first batch’s passing percentage which was 72, there is also some improvement. In the coming years, more efforts are being planned, so as to get the good results.

We expect the program design to stabilize over the next 4-5 years. Being a pilot scale program in its development phase, per child cost of this program is high, but it should stabilize at around Rs. 7500/- per child per year when it reaches the scale of existing middle school program. In 2015-16, this program had 7 classes of grade 8 and 3 classes of grade 9 and 2 classes of grade 10, covering a total of 319 children, as mentioned in the Table 3.

Grades	Centers	Children	Boys	Girls
TD 8	7	192	94	98
STD 9	3	75	44	31
STD 10	2	52	>22	30
TOTAL	12	319	160	159

Main Features:

• Classrooms nearby homes/ communities, so allowing more girls of teen age to continue studies
• Curriculum content made suitable to the student’s natural learning style
• Pedagogical approaches learnt from the successful examples across India- World and also from pedagogy experts and adapted for the needs of the children
• Use of human resources available locally and easily at each level
• Regular (Fortnightly) extensive training of all categories of the staff
• Subject specific grade wise teachers
• Additional personalized – individual coaching to all the students, as not supported by parents

Adolescent Girls Education Program

India has succeeded in ensuring close to universal school enrolment but the rate of drop out before school completion remains very high, particularly among girls. This was more so in the past so in all states, a majority of adolescent girls, particularly in backward states are as if un-schooled. Since women/ mothers’ education is a key determinant of family’s welfare and children’s future, the education of adolescent girls to a state close to school completion is an important national priority. India has had many programs of ‘training’ of adolescent girls, in skills related to reproductive health or employment, but not many have tried to compensate for the absence of school education. With support from Packard foundation, Gyan Shala launched a 3 year program of the education of adolescent girls living in slums of Ahmedabad in 2009. The aim was to develop and implement such a module that would bring the girls to a level close to grade 7 level education.

The design and implementation of this program has posed complex challenges, the biggest of which related to very large diversity of capability-interest among the target group of girls, and the competitive demands of normal life, which made it very tough for the girls to attend the classes located in their community regularly even for 3 hours of duration, and continue the process for 3 years. After detailed review of first 3 year’s experience, this program has been re-casted as a two year program with less academic orientation, but which shall still aim to inculcate educational mind-set of a grade 7 student. This new design has been launched in 2013, whose impact has been determined by tests conducted by Vidya Bhawan Society, through comparison of base-line and end-line tests administered by external expert agency. Also, Gray Matters India Pvt. Ltd. also carried out Program Impact Assessment through the detailed comparison of Control group and Treatment group, which showed that treatment group has achieved more with compared to the Control group in subject specific skills namely Language, Math and Science. It was also found that treatment group also showed higher percentage in non–cognitive domain such as socio emotional well being.

Prof. Mrs. Leela Visaria, esteemed Development Researcher and honorary professor at Gujarat Institute of Development Research, had conducted a study of qualitative impacts of the program through her research lens, in June 2015. She and her team had designed a questionnaire and interviewed 86 program girls in the age range of 13 to 18 years. Interviews were also conducted of equal number of the girls of the same age group in the same socio-economic slum settings, where Gyanshala had neer run classes. She also conducted focused group discussions of the women teachers who participated in the program.

Here, the focus was on understanding the changes that participation in Gyanshala education program had brought about in the adolescent girls, agency and empowerment as well as knowledge about reproductive health, this study compared these girls with those who were not exposed to such program on a range of indicators.

Such as views on marriage, dowry system, autonomy and ability and freedom to take decisions on matters such money, talking to boys, mobility, views on health seeking behavior, violence, etc

She has also noticed the following important findings, which shows success of the AGP in terms of education of the program participant girls for reproductive and maternal health.

As far as health seeking behavior is concerned, large differences were noted between the two groups of girls with regard to a few issues such as how to handle child’s excreta, drinking water and knowledge about contraceptives and reproductive health. Clearly, the group exposed to the Gyanshala programme was better informed on these issues compared to the control group. The Gyanshala group was also much better informed on precautions to be taken during pregnancy such as the need for good nutrition, for iron supplementation and for calcium. On certain other health issues such as washing hands after going to toilet, keeping cooked food covered, etc. there were no differences between the two groups.

All the three different assessment reports have noted the achievements by the program participant girls on various cognitive and non cognitive areas, but could not directly link all the achievements to the exposure to the program only. As an organization also, GyanShala believe that life is beyond classrooms and the knowledge- experience shared by the participant girls is a cumulative learning from the society and various media, along with their discussions in the classrooms.

Learning:

The investment of six years in designing, modifying and implementing the program has developed the organizational capability of ESO to understand and deal with complex issues of reaching to the Adolescent girls, so as to impact their lives. It also helped in widening the focus of the organization beyond pure academics to other social and life skills, related with non cognitive areas of development and very much necessary for the program participants.

Batch wise Coverage of the Adolescent girls during the program and their attendance.

Batch	Duration	No. of Adolescent Girls	Average Attendance (in percentage)
AGP 1	Aug. 2009 to June 2012	392	Could not compile
AGP 2	Nov.2010 to June 2013	334	50
AGP 3	Sep.2011 to Sep. 2013	114	61
AGP 4	June 2012 to June 2014	247	59
AGP 5	July 2013 to July 2015	613	55

Positive aspects of the program:

1. The program had provided opportunities to the girls to share their concerns, questions, issues with fellow girls as well as teachers and field supervisors.
2. The program was able to identify the needs of the participant girls and accordingly streamline curriculum, learning material, teacher guides and activities for the duration of two years.
3. The program succeeded in boosting confidence levels of the girls and changing their views in identifying role of women in prevailing socio- economic situations.

Limitations of the program:

1. The program could not streamline regular attendance of all the girls who have been enrolled, and could not prevent dropouts.
2. The program could not achieve as much in terms of academic excellence, which is one of the core outcomes of the other education programs of GyanShala.

Way Forward:

The experience of running this program for six years has built organizational capability and expertise. Education Support Organization will be able to run similar programs with specific as well as modified learning outcomes with better confidence for non-cognitive domains of education.

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 Research Network, was one of the early programs of ML-A, which was funded by InfoDev, World Bank. ML-A withdrew from India in 2003 due to some differences at the level of government, but GS went ahead with its CAL program in both rural and urban classes. The impact of this program was analyzed by Poverty Action Lab (PAL), MIT, USA.

GS CAL had two distinctive-innovative features. First, it was not designed as a stand-alone set of exercises on chosen topics, as was typical of most CAL, at that time. Instead, the CAL exercises were aligned to the pace at which class was progressing, so these could reinforce what happened in the normal class. Second, CAL gave a very large time access to each child, almost 1 hour daily, at low operating cost. To attain the goal of low cost, GS evolved an innovative software solution that split the screen in two parts, with one part responding to key board and another to the mouse. It then became possible for two children to work on one computer independently as if it was made of two computers. A design team from Microsoft development centre, Banglore, came to see GS-CAL, and then went on to integrate their multi-mouse feature with split screen feature like GS, as an open source platform to develop educational software.

The GS CAL was implemented in 10 rural and ten urban locations, covering 20 classes at each place, with an equal number in control group. CAL was implemented for one year at each place. The impact of the program was analyzed by the researcher of PAL, MIT, USA, to conclude that the CAL made significant but little improvements in learning levels in all schools, but learning gains were large when the normal class processes were of poor quality. The use of CAL was, thus justified in very poor performing schools like many government schools, but its use in a reasonably run schools may not be justified. GS also discovered that the cost of operations in rural areas, which did not have assured power supply, became very large due battery fed power.

This research project also allowed the GS team to analyze the experience of using CAL in government schools in six countries, namely Australia, Singapore, Philippines, HongKong-China, Switzerland and USA. The overall conclusion of this study was that CAL did not appear to lead to significant improvement in learning outcomes, or enriched curriculum transactions up to grade 6, except in helping develop computer literacy. The use of internet from grade 7 onwards enabled children to take up learning tasks which could not have been undertaken without CAL. CAL, therefore, appeared to be very potent learning assistance in grade 7 onwards, but its utility at earlier school stage is suspect.

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 the pilot and another set of randomly selected schools were identified as the control-comparison group to study the program impact.

The AMC school teachers adopted GS curriculum material and pedagogy, and children were provided similar teaching-learning material used in GS classes. GS trained AMC school teachers in its pedagogy and use of its learning material, and deployed a small team of experienced staff to support teachers in the program implementing.

In the first year, the program covered around 2000 children studying in grade 1. In subsequent years, the existing batches moved one grade up, and a new grade 1 class was brought under the program coverage. The program covered around 7800 children and around 190 teachers of grades 1-4 in the year 2009-10.

The analysis of students’ test score over 2008-09 and 2009-10 by Educational Initiative, an independent agency, showed that the program helped raise children’s score in math and language competencies, compared to children’s score in other AMC schools, by 25-65%, across subjects and grades. The program cost came to Rs. 500-650/- per child per year. AMC normally spends almost Rs. 18,000/- per child per year on running its school. A learning gain of 25-65% for an additional spending of Rs. 600/- per child made this program a good investment of resources.

In the year 2010-11, the program ran into opposition from a group of teachers and elected members of the AMC school board. This is not uncommon in working with the government system. Consequently, the program was suspended for 2010-11. Some people referred the issue to the top political leadership of the state, pointing out that a program benefitting around 8000 children had been discontinued. The State leadership decided that the program curriculum would be referred to the Gujarat State Council of Education Research (GCERT), and could be resumed on being cleared by it. GCERT cleared the GS curriculum with some suggestions for improvement, all of which were acceptable to GS., but due toi political resistance at the local level, the program could not restart, in spite of top level support from politico-administrative set up.

Building on this experience, though, Gyan Shala could secure agreement of the Government of Bihar to initiate a 4 year pilot in 7300 schools, mostly rural, in four districts of Bihar, to introduce the curriculum and class practices developed by Gyan Shala. It was decided that under the pilot, each child will receive daily worksheet, for each subject, as happens in GyanShala.

PPP management of Government Schools in Gujarat

In 2009, GS was selected by the Tribal Development department of the Government of Gujarat to take over the management of one Eklavya Model Residential Tribal High School, at Shamlaji. The total cost was borne by the government, while GS was given total operational and academic freedom, including the appointment of teachers and other staff. The school management was handed over back to the Government in the year 2013.