Vision
- To become one of India’s most effective NGO program to address the schooling quality gaps and help India improve its ranking in social development indicators.
Mission
- To evolve a cost-effective total system solution model for quality school education on a nationwide scale, without discrimination based on any factor.
- To initiate a systemic transformation in school education by measuring the improvements in
learning levels feasible by improving pedagogy practices with high accountability.
- To implement the program at a substantial scale, generating credible evidence of impact in
order to inform the overall policy-program formulation by the government.
Goal
- To enable every child from poor urban and rural family attain learning levels of school education similar to that of children in elite schools.
Values
- Empathy & Humility
- Integrity & Ethics
- Equity & Accountability
- Teamwork & Excellence
Gyan Shala aims to set up a replicable and scalable model to provide good quality basic school education to children from poor and low-income rural and urban families, 95% of our children, on par with what is available to urban upper-income classes. It started its 10 grade I classes in Ahmedabad in 2000 and had grown to have around 1630 grades 1-10 classes in 2014-15, covering around 44000 children in the slums of nine cities across four states. In between, Gyan Shala had also run a rural component, testing and establishing the viability of the program in a rural setting. Gyan Shala has been invited to introduce key elements of its learning approach to improve quality in Government schools.
Gyan Shala learns from various education experts as well as best practices from the world and ensures implementation through its team of around 1200 people including teachers, field supervisors and designers cum managers. Although Gyan Shala classes are held in slum settings, it follows best classroom transactions such as whole class teaching, small group activities for peer learning and self-learning through daily workbooks. Gyan Shala strives to improve its practices by involving credible agencies to rate various organizational processes with a focus on students’ achievements.
Gyan Shala facilitates external program and student assessments by reputed agencies periodically to establish the effectiveness of the program and to make necessary on-course corrections. Gyan Shala children performed on par or better then, India’s best CBSE schools, as per credible independent assessments by ASSET of Educational Initiatives (EI) – India, and CfBT Trust, UK.