India Foundation for Education Transformation (IFET)

Supported by: Wipro

The organization’s vision, mission and strategy

Vision: Northeast India has been a theater of conflicts over the years. Its richness, plurality, diversity of people, and strong tribal identity affiliation have often contributed to tension among and between communities. We seek to use education to imbibe and foster friendship, tolerance, and mutual coexistence among competing tribal communities. This is why, our vision is to transform communities into peaceful, critically conscious socio-economically powered through education that believes in harmony and social coexistence.

Mission: To build a strong academic foundation in 30,000 early graders by 2028 and to enable 5,000 secondary graders to get into colleges.

Location and project details

The Changlang District came into existence on 14 November 1987 covering an area of 4,662 sq. km. The district is situated in a unique geographical setting bounded in the East and South by Myanmar. As per the findings of the 2011 Census, the total population of the district is 148,226 (76,948 males and 71,278 females) constituting 10.7 percent of the State Population spread over 4,662 Sq. Km. area of the district. 

Among the fifteen Circles of the district, Diyun (32,007) is the most populated circle and Renuk (715) is the least populated circle. Other circles in order of their population size are Bordumsa, Miao, Kharsang, Changlang, Jairampur, Vijoynagar, Namtok, Nampong, Khimiyong, Yatdam, Manmao, Tikhak Rima Putok and Lyngok Longtoi circles. The highest percentage of the ST population reported is in Khimiyong Circles (94.7%) and the lowest percentage (9.5%) was recorded in Diyun Circle among the 11 Circles of the district.

Students studying in government schools who are suffering from glaring foundational literacy and numeracy skills deficiencies. According to ASER 2018, in Changlang District, 72.3% of students in class III-V cannot read level 2 text, while 51.3% of students cannot do simple subtraction. Changlang district as per National Achievement Survey 2017, with a mean score of 30 was the lowest among all the districts in Arunachal Pradesh. 

Based on NAS 2017 findings, Changlang district with the lowest score of 259 against a national baseline of 321 is one of the lowest-performing districts in the whole country. Therefore, under the Aspirational District Program, the Ministry of Education has identified Changlang district where maximum intervention is required in the augmentation of foundational literacy and numeracy abilities of students.

The literacy rate of the district is 59.8 percent, and the work participation rate is 42.5 percent.

In Changlang District: District of our intervention, every year 7 out of every 10 students fail in their class 10th CBSE Board Exam while in class 12th it is 6 out of every 10 students. For a student who belongs to a deprived marginalized community in an insurgency-prone areas like ours has life-long consequences.

We have identified that the main cause for this high failure rate at the secondary level is the result of a severe learning crisis at the foundational and primary levels. Based on NAS 2017, the Changlang district has been identified as the lowest-performing district in the country by the Ministry of Education where only a meager percentage of 1.2% of students are at the proficiency level in language in contrast to the National Level at 48%. In mathematics, only 4.7% are at the Proficiency Level.

FLN and School School Transformation Program contextualized and localized to our context- which is based on comprehensive evidence, best practices, and approaches from within India and worldwide. We have partnered with the District Administration and began with one administrative circle consisting of 30 govt schools, empowering 110 teachers and impacting 3000 students. Our program involves each stakeholder having a role to play, which includes the District Administration, Teachers, Students, Parents, Village Headmen, and the SMCs. 

IFET uses state machinery and officials such as DIET BRCCs and CRCCs for the successful implementation of the program. We have signed an MoU with Pratham Education Foundation as our knowledge partner. We have adopted their “Teaching at the Right Level Approach” for classroom teachings. For Teacher Capacity Building we have adopted the “Teaching as Leadership Academic Impact Model.

Alignment of goals: We set clear, measurable, and realistic teachers’ targets and learning goals which are widely shared and reinforced with all the stakeholders involved. The goals are not limited only to classrooms but beyond them.

Academic support: We provide Academic Support and train and empower teachers through various training and workshops to make education a joyful experience for the children. We also provide teachers’ handbooks, toolkits, and high-quality TLMs.

Monitoring and evaluation: We track progress on outcomes and classroom practices and conduct continuous monitoring.

Community participation: Parents are not effectively engaged in supporting their child’s learning at the household or school level: Existing initiatives like SMCs do not focus on supporting learning and are largely dysfunctional. PTMs are held infrequently and have low attendance from parents. Many parents from low socio-economic backgrounds believe that they are not capable of supporting their children’s learning. Engaging each parent in their child’s learning can play an important role in achieving FLNW enable productive community participation, create structures and processes, and conduct regular systematic Parents- Teachers Meeting and SMCs meetings.

The following are our key stakeholders and our scope of work with them:

Teachers: Effective teaching-learning processes: IFET is adopting the Teaching as Leadership (TAL) Framework for teacher capacity building and the ‘Academic Impact Model’ of TeachForAmerica which describes the causal chain of influences in such a classroom as flowing from a teacher’s underlying mindsets, knowledge, and skills, to the teacher’s actions, to the students’ day-to-day actions to the ultimate outcomes for students. 

We build teacher’s required mindsets, knowledge, and skills through regular training, workshops, debriefing sessions, and individual coaching. We support them by providing them with high-quality teaching-learning materials, handbooks, toolkits, and a host of other resources.

Students: Learners’ Progress, Attainment, and Development, unearth creativity: To build a strong academic foundation in students we have partnered with Pratham Education Foundation and adopted their “Teaching at the Right Level Approach.” Our intervention is not only to improve their academic attainment but also to help them unearth and nurture creativity in them. 

Parents and SMCs: Productive community participation: To enable productive community participation we work closely with parents and School Management Committees to enable them to participate actively in their child’s education. We also create structures and systems for the schools so that they actively involve the community in teaching-learning processes.

Government: Aligning Goals and Continuous Monitoring and Evaluation: We believe in establishing deep and meaningful relationships with the government and involving them in the vision each step of the way. Together with the government, we set clear, measurable, and realistic teachers’ targets and Learning goals which are widely shared and reinforced with all the other stakeholders involved. 

The government displays ownership and accountability and provides us support in driving teachers’ actions by designing rewards and consequences systems and issuing officials circulars and notices about the program. Furthermore, the government supports us in tracking progress on outcomes and classroom practices and is involved in conducting continuous monitoring.

 Learnings over the past 1 year

As we are at the threshold of closing into year 1 of our intervention, we have gained significant insights and learning in formalizing a proof of concept (PoA) which will thereby help us in documenting a replicable, robust education model that can be implemented in a challenging context. Through our various intimate interactions with our stakeholders and our supporters-well-wishers, we now are clear in our heads that we should not be looking for scale rather we should be looking for impact. 

This is why we want to work only in 30 government schools under the Diyun Administrative Circle for the next two years. In doing so, we aim to create a model that is worthy of replicating across India to bring about a sustainable change in all levels of education in government schools where learning outcomes are at the lowest.

On the flip side, while we have been brave with our program offerings, we have not shied away from our failures. In our failures, we have learned a lot- our after-school coaching program did not run well and from our past mistakes we are now refining our after-school program offering computer courses and English-speaking courses starting May 2023.

We look forward to entering year 2 of our intervention to further strengthen our relationship with all the stakeholders involved. In year 1 our involvement with the parents and SMCs was negligible we have learned that the success of our FLN program also depends much on our interaction and involvement with the Parents and SMCs. 

We also have neglected the capacity building of our school managers, and we haven’t put that much effort into strengthening their skills and mindsets which we now understand are critical to gaining higher student learning outcomes and also for monitoring and evaluation.

Challenges over the past one year

The main challenge over the past 1 year was building the capacity of our School Managers. We did not have the resources nor any opportunities for their capacity building. It was difficult even to delegate additional roles and responsibilities to our school managers as they could not perform.

Another challenge was creating academic content for our teachers and the students as well. It was challenging firstly to develop the academic teaching-learning materials and secondly, it was a big challenge to print hundreds of contents, and worksheets with our limited financial resources.

Another major challenge was to cover so many schools with only a few School Managers. Even the 12 high-performing schools that we have identified were visited lesser than planned. And the visits were.

not planned well therefore meaningful interactions did not happen.

Plan for the next 1 -3 years

By the end of the Academic Year 2023-2024 we will have gained significant insights and learning in terms of formalizing and refining our processes, program design, and Monitoring and Evaluation(M&E) structures, which would surely help us to scale up to the other Administrative Circles of Changlang district and then to the multiple districts in Arunachal Pradesh. Under year 3, we intend to scale up to 90 schools in three administrative circles. In doing so, we should be able to impact 15000 students.

A detailed plan for FY 2023-24 addressing the educational, organizational, and operational aspects of our work.

For year 2, we are focused on further improving the academic level of the students, building the capacity of the teachers, strengthening our library works around setting up libraries and functioning it more effectively with proactive community involvement; and strengthening the involvement of SMCs and Community in the teaching-learning process; to inculcate love for Nature by working on a cleaner environment around the school and motivating them to plant trees in and around the school.

Some of the objectives and scope of work that we wish to accomplish in this year are as follows:

• We have conducted the Endline Assessment this month and the holidays have started. Before the new academic session begins in June 2023, we wish to review our Endline Report as well as the YEAR 1 report comprehensively.
• Revised program based on Year 1 data and analysis.
• Revised curriculum based on feedback from all stakeholders and secure required materials and equipment.
• Hire additional required resources.
• Capacity Building of new and existing teachers.
• Continuous Teacher Professional Development.
• Capacity Building of SMCs and parents.
• Conduct ongoing research for impact evaluation.
• Continue to build relationships with Govt education stakeholders and officials.
• Continue to expand educational Partnerships.

One of our major focus this year will be to build the capacity of our team members, especially the School Managers. Starting from May 1st we are inviting three TeachForIndia fellows to come to our location as interns and support us in building the skills and the attitude of our school managers. They will share their experiences in the TFI classroom, conduct academic training, and interact everyday basis with our school managers. We are planning to take our team to Ayang Trust for an exposure visit.

We have not identified the exact workshops that we will attend this year, but some workshops and visits are planned for our school managers. We provide relevant details below. 

• Exposure visits to Ayang Trust in Majuli, Assam. Their work is similar to ours. A week-long team visit to their location will be very insightful and helpful in our work.
• We will send one school manager to Bookworm’s library workshop. 
• We are also trying to find a few purely academic workshops where our school managers can go and visit, such as Judo Gyan for mathematics.
• In this year we will also invite resource persons here in our work location for workshops and training. We are in talks with Mr. Karthik Rapaka, – ex-City Director of TFI-Hyderabad.