Flying High – Pratham Books

Across sectors, parents want to educate their wards, at great cost to themselves. Can India Inc engineer, or partner in a revolution to elevate our performance in elementary education? APPARENTLY, Indians have begun to believe in themselves. We all think we belong to a country with a future. For 50 years we were not quite […]

When she found herself suddenly wealthy, the Indian philanthropist founded Pratham Books, a nonprofit publisher that uses innovative ways to put low-cost books in the hands of millions of kids. “My mission is to put a book in every child’s hand,” says Rohini Nilekani That’s an ambitious goal anywhere, but especially in India, where there […]

More than 95 per cent of 69,800 children in government schools can read better today; 45,000 children who could not read before can now read without any hitch. The 45-day accelerated reading programme, conducted jointly by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Akshara Foundation across primary classes in over 1,400 government schools in Bangalore, has done wonders […]

Just recently, I happened to be standing outside a rather new-looking government school, high up on a scraggy hillock in Kolar district in South India. Two young boys, aged about 12, were our curious onlookers and we picked up conversations. One I knew to be a student, because he wore a school uniform, often the […]