Rukmini Banerji
RISE Intellectual Leadership Team
Blog
As part of the EI - Dialogues video podcast series, Dr. Rukmini Banerji, CEO at Pratham and RISE Intellectual Leadership Team member was in conversation with Pranav Kothari, Vice President of Large Scale Education Programs at Educational Initiatives.
Trained as an economist in India, Dr. Rukmini Banerji completed her BA at St. Stephen’s College and attended the Delhi School of Economics. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and earned her PhD at the University of Chicago.
The conversation gains insights on challenges of assessing student learning outcomes, the role of applied research, the importance of evaluation, inception of ASER, and the growth story of Pratham.
1:29 - Challenges in assessing student learning outcomes
7:19 - Role of research and independent evaluation
17:15 - Applied Research in developmental sector
22:00 - Unifying vs decentralized forces in running Pratham
26:35 - Sources of funding in developmental Sector
28:55 - Career trajectory at Pratham
32:45 - Pratham in Africa
EI Dialogues is a new initiative by Educational Initiatives that works towards building the conversation on education for social impact with an aim to confront blind spots, and stimulate ways of thinking, knowing, and working on education in India.
Pratham is an innovative learning organization created to improve the quality of education in India. Pratham is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India. It was co-founded by Madhav Chavan and Farida Lambay. Pratham focuses on high-quality, low-cost, and replicable interventions to address gaps in the education system. Established in 1995 to provide education to children in the slums of Mumbai, Pratham has grown both in scope and geographical coverage, now covering 21 Indian states and parts of Africa. Established in 2008, ASER Centre is Pratham's autonomous research and assessment unit. ASER Centre promotes a culture of evidence-based decision making, and seeks to develop and use simple yet rigorous methods to generate evidence on scale on the outcomes of social sector programs, especially education.
Founded in 2001, Educational Initiatives (EI) is committed to improve learning outcomes and aspires for a world where all children learn with understanding. Large Scale Education Programs is the vertical of Educational Initiatives that exclusively works with low income government schools, specializing in diagnostic assessments for students and teachers, capacity building of teachers and governments, implementation of adaptive and intelligent e-learning systems for personalized learning, impact assessment studies and exploratory research studies that focus on bringing a systemic reform. This is done in collaboration with state governments, international grant makers, corporate foundations, and NGOs.
Cross-posted with permission from Educational Initiatives Pvt Ltd ©2018
RISE blog posts and podcasts reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation or our funders.