Force of Change

An educator's journey that started in the municipal schools of Andheri West is helping bridge the learning gap among young students

- Sudipto Dey

In November this year, educators, teachers and learning experts from across Africa met in Nairobi to brainstorm ways to improve learning skills in primary school children.

In their midst was Rukmini Banerji, chief executive of Pratham Educational Foundation and Pratham co-founder Madhav Chavan. The two were in the Nigerian capital to celebrate five years of Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) Africa, a methodology that helps children in primary school acquire foundational learning skills.

TaRL Africa, a non-profit enterprise, began its journey in 2019 as a joint venture between two social ventures, Pratham and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. In five years, it was scaled up to reach five million children across 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

“I feel deeply humbled and proud that something that we developed for our own needs has relevance and acceptance in other parts of the global South,” says Banerji.

The Early Years

Trained as an economist at St Stephen’s College, Delhi and the Delhi School of Economics, Banerji, now 67, went to Oxford University in 1981 as a Rhodes scholar. She received her PhD at the University of Chicago and worked in the social sector in the United States for several years before returning to India in 1996.