Two children laughing at Early Childhood Education Project by Pledge Foundation

Education

Pledge Foundation, along with its partner organizations are working at the grassroots level to make sure that children do not have to face the barriers and can fully exercise their right to education. We focus on education of the underprivileged children of India with our child centric education plan and making our children future ready.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental right for everybody.

What is the present situation?

  • 262 million primary and secondary age children and youth are out of school
  • Less than 1 in 5 countries legally guarantee 12 years of free and compulsory education
  • 1 child out of 11 does not go to primary school
  • 1 adolescents out of 5 is left out of secondary education
  • More and 1 in 2 children of primary school age failed to reach the minimum proficiency level in reading quality standards
Girl writing on a black board

The Problem

Low accessibility

The percentage of rural children who were not enrolled in school doubled during the pandemic, with Government schools seeing an increase in enrolment at the expense of private schools, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021. Over a third of children enrolled in Classes 1 and 2 have never attended school in person. However, enrolment does not necessarily mean that learning took place. In a survey of over 76,000 households with children aged six to 14, ASER found that while 92% of children had textbooks for their grade, only a third had access to any other learning resources or support

The curriculum doesn’t meet the developmental needs of children.

Out of the 240 million children in India aged between 0-8 years, 74%, i.e; 178 million live in rural areas. Millions of children in both urban and rural pockets are at risk of not reaching their full potential because of inadequate nutrition, a lack of early stimulation, learning, and nurturing care, and exposure to stress. UNICEF data shows that over 43 % of children under the age of five are at risk of not fulfilling their full developmental potential.

The ASER 2018 report highlighted that 65 percent of Class V children in private schools in rural India could read a Class II level text, while only 44 percent of children in government schools could do so - a difference of 21 percentage points. This is grave considering that more than 60% of all Indian children in the age group of 6-14 are enrolled in government schools and only about 30% are enrolled in private schools.

Lack of qualified and trained teachers

One of the challenges facing India’s state Governments is to prepare teachers for pre-primary education. One in 6 elementary teachers in India is not trained. The New Education Policy outlines many arguments; the most important of which is that currently India spends only 3% of its GDP on education and ranks 62nd in total public expenditure on education per student.

Pre-school programmes in India are known by different nomenclatures i.e. Anganwadis, Balwadis, nursery school, pre-school, preparatory classes, kindergarten, lower kindergarten (LKG), upper kindergarten (UKG), play centres, crèches, Balvatikas etc. Training teachers at these centers to impart foundational literacy is one of the primary infrastructural pain points in India.

Inadequate education at a young age

Currently, most early childhood education is delivered through anganwadis and private-preschools. However, there has been less focus on the educational aspects of early childhood

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