Usha Rane is the Director of Content & Training at Pratham. She has been with Pratham since 1996 and is one of the leaders of the teaching-learning innovations at the organisation. Prior to joining Pratham, Usha worked for many years with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL).
Until recently, as Regional Head, Usha was responsible for Pratham’s work across six states (Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Odisha) where she helped establish partnerships with the state governments to help improve learning skills of children in primary schools. In 2002 and 2012, she authored and co-authored respectively the “Maharashtra State Human Development Report”, which focused on the issue of the social development in the state.
While an advocate of learning at the primary level, Usha has also developed several programmes for higher order competencies. In 2012, she established the Second Chance programme to help dropout girls and women to complete their seminal Grade 10 examinations which has grown to nine states in the country. From 2013 to 2015, Usha developed a USAID-funded research-based programme in collaboration with the government of Maharashtra to study how children at functional literacy levels could acquire comprehension skills.
Since early 2018, Usha has been a part of the Pratham team that works internationally to spread and scale up Teaching at the Right Level internationally. As the lead for language instruction design, content development, and training, Usha has built the capacities of government staff and partner organizations to implement the TaRL methodology in primary schools across in Zambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Kenya, Niger, Madagascar, Uganda, Mozambique and Peru.