Education

The study was sponsored by Azeem Premji Foundation, Banglore. The assessment study of Learning Guarantee Programme in Gujarat was carried during September – October 2007 covering 494 teachers and head teachers, 146 Clusters Resource Coordinators, 22 Block Resource Coordinators and 180 parents/ members of the Village Education Committee. A few indepth case studies were carried out to validate and strengthen the funding of the study. The study was conducted in Banaskantha & Sabarkantha districts of Gujarat State. The main objective of the study is to determine the perceptions and opinions about various aspects of Learning Guarantee Programme among various stake holders. The study indicated that the programme lead to improvement in the quality of education and school attendance of both boys and girls.

The study was sponsored by Zee Telefilms Ltd., Mumbai. BEST aimed to impart basic education at primary school level through television. Syllabus based and intended as class room viewing for primary school children of classes I to V, BEST is targeted to children in rural and semi-rural areas covering around 10,000 primary schools in nine Hindi speaking states in a phased manner over five years. Comparative analysis of text books of classes I to V of nine states was completed; lesson briefs prepared; prototype produced and pretested in the field of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

American India Foundation, Bangalore entrusted the Foundation to carry out the assessment study in five cities. The study aimed to evaluate the Digital Equalizer Programme of the American India Foundation (AIF) in bridging what is known as the ‘Digital Divide (The divide between those with and without access to Internet). Under the programme, AIF has set up Internet Learning centers in several underserved schools in the cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata. The study was done to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme. Data were collected from six sets of respondents – students, teachers, Internet learning centre facilitators, principals, administrative staff of the schools and AIF City coordinators. Besides, Focus Group Discussions were also held with teachers in all five cities to qualitatively assess the program.