History of TaRL’s Evidence in India

This study explores a randomised evaluation of three interventions to encourage beneficiaries’ participation to India: providing information on existing institutions, training community members in a testing tool for children, and training volunteers to hold remedial reading camps. These interventions had no impact on community involvement, teacher effort, or learning outcomes inside the school. However, in the third intervention, youth volunteered to teach camps, and children who attended substantially improved their reading skills. This suggests that citizens face constraints in influencing public services. Explore the findings  here and a J-PAL policy brief here.

In this study, researchers evaluate a series of efforts to scale up the NGO Pratham’s approach to teaching children according to their actual learning level, in four Indian States. While this approach was previously shown to be extremely effective when implemented with community volunteers outside of school, the objective of these new scale-up evaluations was to develop a model that could be implemented within the government school system. In the first two instances (Bihar and Uttarakhand), the methodology was not adopted by government school teachers, despite well-received training sessions and Pratham support. Motivated by the quantitative and qualitative analysis of these early attempts, the approach was adapted and large-scale experiments in the states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh were designed to test two new scale-up models. In Haryana, teachers received support from government resource persons trained by Pratham, and implemented the approach during a dedicated hour. In Uttar Pradesh, Pratham volunteers implemented high-intensity, short-burst “learning camps” for 40 days, in school and during school hours, with additional 10-day summer camps. Both models proved effective, with gains in language of 0.15 standard deviation in Haryana, and 0.70 standard deviations in Uttar Pradesh, on all students enrolled in these schools at baseline. These two models provide blueprints that can be replicated inside other government systems. Explore the findings in detail here.

Pratham’s “Read India” initiative, launched nearly a decade ago, aims to enhance basic reading and arithmetic skills in primary school children. It has evolved to employ two primary strategies. The first involves direct engagement with village communities and local schools, primarily through short-term “Learning Camps” where local volunteers help teach children in groups based on their learning levels. The second strategy is collaboration with the government, focusing on grouping children by learning level rather than grade for teaching. Both strategies have shown significant improvements in children’s learning levels, as evidenced by independent evaluations and randomised control trials. The initiative not only focuses on ground-level teaching and learning changes but also aims to shift priorities at the system level, addressing challenges in instructional change and the role of non-governmental actors in educational transformation. Explore the findings in detail here.

In this paper, the authors describe the journey from the original concept to the design and evaluation of scalable policy by evaluating a series of strategies that aim to integrate the NGO Pratham’s “Teaching at the Right Level” methodology into elementary schools in India. Evidence is presented from randomised controlled trials involving some designs that failed to produce impacts within the regular schooling system but still helped shape subsequent versions of the program. As a result of this process, two versions of the programs were developed that successfully raised children’s learning levels using scalable models in government schools. This example draws general lessons about using randomised control trials to design scalable policies. Explore the detailed findings here.

This paper studies an education program targeting primary school children in rural India, which combines a standard in-school pedagogical intervention with an out-of-school study group program managed by parents. We rely on a crosscutting experimental design across 200 villages and find the full program to significantly increase children’s test scores in mathematics and language by 0.09 and 0.11 standard deviations respectively. When the two program components are implemented in isolation, there is no impact on children’s learning. The cost-effectiveness analysis highlights high returns from adopting a multidimensional approach that supports children’s learning processes both in and out of school. Explore the detailed findings here.

This study investigates and conceptualises how a development agency can use evidence to improve and expand its development programs, taking the case of the Indian NGO “Pratham.” In a series of experiments with researchers, Pratham developed and refined their learning agenda to search for a better strategy to improve children’s foundational learning. Pratham has also regularly conducted a nationwide survey on children’s foundational learning. Data from the nationwide survey demonstrated the problem in children’s foundational learning, and evidence from experiments showed an option for an effective strategy to address it. The search, learning, and communication cycle using data and evidence, conceptualised from the case of Pratham, would enhance the effectiveness of development agencies to better support educational development. Explore the findings in detail here.