Yamini Aiyar
Centre for Policy Research (CPR)
Blog
Video: Initiatives in India That Align Levels of Instruction with Goals and the Needs of Students
In a new RISE video, Rukmini Banerji and Yamini Aiyar discuss a path to improving children's foundational skills by aligning instruction with goals and the needs of students.
Authors
How can education systems ensure that all children achieve mastery of foundational skills? In the below video, Rukmini Banerji (Pratham) and Yamini Aiyar (Centre for Policy Research, India) discuss a possible approach: Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL). TaRL was pioneered by Pratham, an NGO in India of which Rukmini is the CEO. Rukmini describes how TaRL was developed as a civil society response to alarmingly low levels of learning in India, and how the TaRL approach has since been adapted to other contexts. Next, Yamini discusses a TaRL-inspired initiative that was implemented throughout the Delhi school system. This reform that was hindered by several frictions throughout the school system, but still achieved some notable successes.
The challenge of helping children to cultivate foundational literacy and numeracy has become more acute—and more important—as the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the longstanding learning crisis. TaRL is one of many possible ways to address that challenge. As detailed in a RISE Insight Note, a diverse range of approaches have successfully raised foundational learning in low- and middle-income countries. These approaches may look very different on the surface, but they implicitly share a set of principles that support children’s learning. Collectively, we call this set of principles “ALIGNS”, or Aligning Levels of Instruction with Goals and the Needs of Students.
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