黑料情报站

Kruti Bharucha is CEO of , an 黑料情报站 venture. Peepul is an education non-profit that aims to transform children鈥檚 lives in India. Since 2010, Peepul and has partnered with government and other organisitions to run schools and deliver education programmes.

Kruti has more than 19 years鈥� experience in various leadership and management roles in the education, management consulting and advisory sectors as well as with multilateral institutions. As CEO of Peepul she provides the strategic direction and vision for the India operations, managing the portfolio of programmes and identifying innovations and partnerships that will lead to significant improvement in learning outcomes in government schools.

I鈥檓 not a big fan of Elvis Presley but a line from one of his songs has stuck in my mind 鈥� 鈥淎 little less conversation, a little more action, please.鈥� When it comes to improving learning outcomes in India, we have no time to waste. No time for conference speakers to drone on, no time for research that only produces another report on poor learning levels in the country, and no time to complain about how accountability systems and processes are broken. Too many children are not learning and every moment that we don鈥檛 act is a moment wasted in a child鈥檚 life. We also need to act in ways that will focus on improving learning. While there has been an increase in education spending over the last five years, learning outcomes have been poor and have been declining.

Here are five ways in which I believe we need to act:

1. We need clear examples of what good quality education looks like

There aren鈥檛 enough real cases that demonstrate what good quality education means for every child in the classroom and raise the bar for what our education system should deliver. My litmus test for this is my own eight-year-old son. When I evaluate the performance of the schools that we run in partnership with the government, I constantly ask myself whether I would send my son to the schools. If the answer is yes, I know we鈥檙e doing something right. If I鈥檓 not sure, we need to do better.

2. We need to focus on classroom practice

This is where change needs to happen. Teachers need to be equipped with the right training on effective techniques and they should be introduced to concepts such as differentiation, where each child learns according to his or her level. Teacher training must be practical and teachers must be provided feedback on the job.

3. We need to involve parents

I cringe when I hear someone say, 鈥淭hese parents are not educated and won鈥檛 provide any support to the child.鈥� This is untrue. We鈥檝e seen parents deeply invested in their child鈥檚 education 鈥� attendance at our parent-teacher meetings is 95%. They are willing to do what it takes to ensure their child doesn鈥檛 struggle the way they did.

4. We need to scale programmes that demonstrate impact

We can’t just run to the next innovation or pilot. Supporting the expansion of a proven model to 1,000 schools is more likely to lead to classroom impact than supporting 10 new programmes that all strive to 鈥渞edefine education.鈥� Programmes must be rigorously evaluated for impact before they are scaled.

5. We need to partner more

Whether it鈥檚 public-private partnerships or NGO partnerships or state government knowledge sharing, more needs to happen. It takes a village to raise a child and it will take a nation working together to ensure that all children get the education they deserve.

This blog has also appeared as an op-ed piece in . You can find out more about here.

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