Large Scale Education Programmes takes our expertise in assessments, educational research, and technology-based personalized adaptive learning for children in low income government schools. We specialize in systemic capacity building projects, impact assessment studies, and research that aim to bring learning outcome oriented reform in education.
LSEP has partnered with the Government of Rajasthan to collectively support government school teachers in improving learning outcomes of students through the use of Mindspark Bhasha. This programmes is currently reaching about 10,000 students in 70 government schools of Rajasthan with potential to scale to more schools and states.
Over the past few years, LSEP has worked on education projects across India, Bhutan, Maldives & Ethopia in multiple languages with different grades for more than 10 million students. We want to transform the education system from rote learning to learning with understanding for all.
Mindspark in Rajasthan Government Schools
Mindspark introduced for improving Language Comprehension and Mathematics in Hindi language in 70 government schools in Rajasthan.
Read Alliance: Rigorous Early Grade Reading Diagnostics
Creation of an accurate and intuitive diagnostic e-tool for Hindi language (mother tongue). The objective of the project was to address the important pedagogic need for an accurate and reliable diagnosis of challenges faced by 10,000 children in the age group of 6 to 10 years reading in class I to V.
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Young Lives Secondary School Survey
Assessment of English & Math of secondary school children in India, Vietnam and Ethiopia.
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Time on Task Study in Secondary Schools
A study to document and analyse the current use of teachers’ classroom time and identify good practice to improve classroom teaching in Mathematics and Language.
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Bihar State-Wide Student Assessments
Largest state-wide census assessments covering 58 lakh children across Bihar.
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Evaluation of Activity-Based Learning as a means of Child-Friendly Education
The project is a research study commissioned by UNICEF to evaluate the activity based learning methodology being adopted in schools in 7 states in India - Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
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Establishing Benchmarks of Student Learning
A study to understand actual learning levels of children in a range of class 3rd to 7th in the Indian school systems.
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Gujarat Board Exam Reform
A study to understand the best exam practices followed by other state and international boards and making recommendations to improve Gujarat state board 10th grade examination.
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Study on Student Learning
One of the largest studies conducted in 18 states and 1 union territory of India to understand the learning levels of students.
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Study on Student Learning in the Metros
Research Study to understand how well are children learning in the top schools of our country.
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This working paper is about the technique of longitudinal evaluation using a Student Progress Tracking System, which is an online system that tracks year-on-year progress of students on scholastic and co-scholastic (co-curricular) skills. SPTS comprises a comprehensive database of students, teachers and schools. The system can help policy makers, school managements and teachers get accurate data for taking timely decisions. Such systems are becoming critical if large scale education systems have to move from providing access to providing quality education. EI uses this system in our analysis of the Annual Status of Student Learning in Bhutan.
It is being increasingly understood and accepted that the quality of learning in the country today is unacceptably poor. The goal, clearly, is to provide quality education and at scale. We present here a solution – Mindspark – which we believe is educationally-rich and technologically-supported. It is a computer-based, adaptive learning solution designed to allow the child to learn at her own pace and to serve, wherever possible, to supplement, not replace classroom learning. This paper summaries two interesting pilot studies conducted to track the learning progress in rural and municipal school students due to engagement with Mindspark.
Educational Initiatives (EI) and READ Alliance, with the help of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) collaborated and conducted a research study across three districts of Rajasthan to create a comprehensive adaptive testing tool (tech — based) to diagnose early grade reading skills for Hindi language. This was done to help teachers identify language learning gaps and provide remediation methods. The full report highlights the test structure, process, creation of the tool, and key insights
National level benchmarking achievement studies, that provide detailed and granular information and insights into how our children are learning, can provide powerful ‘data-driven’ insights into the existing learning gaps – for students to learn better, teachers to teach better, and schools and policy makers to operate more efficiently. This study assessed students in urban local body schools of 30 towns of India with respect to specific skills and competencies that they were expected to have acquired. The assessment data of the study can be filtered state-wise, town-wise, schoolwise, student-wise, gender-wise, skill-wise subject-wise for Language, Maths and EVS and class-wise for classes 2, 4 and 6 here.
Quality Education Study (QES) aims to find answers to what constitutes ‘Quality Education’. This study has been conceptualized and managed jointly by Wipro and Educational Initiatives (EI) and the execution was carried out by EI. QES tries to expand the meaning of ‘quality’ in education to include educational outcomes beyond student performance in subjects and study the attributes of quality learning environments. In a limited sense, this study shares the findings based on the large scale study of the scholastic, co-scholastic and affective outcomes and the different aspects of the learning environments found in India’s ‘top’ schools. These ‘top’ schools in our largest cities arguably represent the best education that is available in the county.In this working paper, we will discuss only the scholastic aspect of these learning environments.
Investments in teacher training are not showing clear returns in increased student achievement levels. Teachers in many cases are in need of specific feedback – which will provide them insights on where, what and how to improve their own abilities in order to function with effectiveness. A Teacher Needs Assessment (TNA) that identifies common strengths or weaknesses among teachers, provides feedback to individual teachers, and recommends specific system level interventions for teacher improvement assumes relevance in this scenario. This working paper shares EI’s experience in designing and carrying out Teacher Needs Assessment in India and Bhutan.
Student Learning Study is the first comprehensive national study of Indian states that attempts to explain the performances in terms of what students know and are able to do. The results clearly show which concepts or topics are understood only by students performing at higher levels and which topics are understood by other students also. Certain topics are said to ‘anchor’ at certain percentile levels of performance – 90th percentile (advanced), 75th percentile (high), 50th percentile (intermediate), and 25th percentile (low). Insights provided by the Scale Anchoring process can help us understand the way children learn, and plan scientific remediation.
India’s participation in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15 year old students in 2009 showed that our brightest ones were nearly 1 standard deviation behind the best students of the world, while our average students were 0.5 standard deviation behind the world’s weakest students. As a country we need to address the quality of learning effectively and, – fundamental issues needs to be recognised. These issues are – rote learning, lack of data-based evidence, – and the absence of systemic monitoring. Assessments of student learning have now gained prominence for this purpose. But there is a paucity of data on learning outcomes at the secondary level. With these issues in mind, MacArthur Foundation – with its focus on secondary education – commissioned Educational Initiatives to conduct an assessment to benchmark learning levels in secondary schools – grades 9 & 10 in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan in 2013-14. The study covered more than 50,000 students across 800 government and Affordable Private Schools (APS).
