Azim Premji Foundation

The Azim Premji Foundation is a non-profit focused on improving Indian education by providing long term developmental programs to teachers, principals and schools. The Foundation begain working with the state of Karnataka, where it is headquartered, and has expanded operations to work with over 25 social organizations across the country and, to date, has engaged deeply with over 8,000 educators and 900 schools across 17 states of India. The foundation is named after the sole benefactor, Azim Premji, one of the wealthiest entreprenuers in India and Chairman & CEO of BPO heavy-hitter, Wipro Technologies.

The vision of the foundation is to significantly contribute to quality universal education as a foundation to a just, humane and equitable society through three principles, access, equity and quality. Their mission is defined as:

• Develop world class human resources in the field of education.
  
• Catalyze a national movement for Universalisation of Elementary Education in India.
• Achieve significant improvement in the quality of education as a sustained method for attracting and retaining children in the school
  
• Work with existing government initiatives and create new ones to improve access, content and delivery of education.
• Build active, sustainable partnerships with individuals, community at large, government and other organizations committed to the field of education to leverage the effort for optimum results.
  
• Enable schools to guarantee learning

Upon this basis, the foundation has implemented three key programs:

1. Learning Guarantee Program - To build a voluntary spirit of accountability among schools, community and Government functionaries and study factors that influence learning
2. Child Friendly Schools - To demonstrate comprehensive and sustainable quality of education in identified schools in partnership with the schools, parents, Government and UNICEF
3. Computer Aided Learning - To create excitement and interest in children about school and learning and provide teachers with interactive material to supplement teaching of difficult subjects

This was the first of the NGO visits and provided a glaring contrast to the high tech companies we had visited thus far. Previously, the concern for quality education had been discussed by Professor Gowda and many of the executives, at the university level. This was the first exposure to the larger problem of primary education, principally from grades 1 through 8.

The Indian public school system follows the British metric system where the equivalent of high school would be the 10 grade, or Metric standard. To provide a point of reference to the scope of the education crisis, 1 out of every 3 children in the 5th grade cannot read, and only 31% of children reach the 10th Standard, of which only 40% pass. Shocking numbers for a country that is being touted to rival China which boasts 91% literacy!

The largest challenge facing the Azim Premji Foundation is not how to increase enrollment, or disseminate best teaching practices, or even ensure quality eduation to each child. The largest challenge is actually scalability. There are many proven methods to improve education, but how do these methods actually work when the implementation scope covers 1.3 Million schools, 5.5 Million teachers and 200 Million students?

The Azim Premji Foundation takes a practical approach by partnering with the state government. Implementing change in each school one by one is impossible, instead, they take over government schools and deploy the three key programs, making adjustments as necessary for the local environment. Once they have proven the concept on at least 1,000 schools, the state government must agree to take back ownership of the schools, adopt the model and deploy it throughout the state.

The visit to the Azim Premji Foundation was sobering, but I felt it was a welcome dose of reality to temper the high-flying optimism and energy I felt the tech boom created in Bangalore.

-Juwayriyah Hussain