Education Outlook for Tamil Nadu 2011

• Over 99% of children aged 6-14 are enrolled in school in Tamil Nadu. Despite this, 60% of students in grade 3 cannot read simple words in Tamil. Over 65% of students in grade 5 cannot read a simple grade 2 text fluently.
• The situation is equally dismal in arithmetic. Only 50% of children in grade 2 can recognize numbers greater than 10. 60% of children in grade 5 cannot do simple subtraction.

Pratham in Tamil Nadu this Year

• In Tamil Nadu, Pratham works as an affiliate organization, closely connected to two local education NGOs: Aid India and Vidyarambam. Pratham’s Read India program is run by Aid India, while the two organizations also run several programs of their own.
• Aid India runs the Read India program in Tamil Nadu, as well as their own programs, such as Eureka Superkidz Centers, learning centers similar to Read India’s after Superkidz Centers run intensively over smaller geographies, with paid volunteers workbooks for children. For both Read India and Eureka Superkidz Centers, AID India trains volunteers on proven accelerated learning methods, providing effective teaching-learning materials and monitoring learning outcomes closely to ensure real progress. Finally, Aid India runs two model Eureka Superkidz Schools for village children in Tamil Nadu, demonstrating the power of their pedagogy and the results possible when schools focus on learning achievement. Of the 639 BEP villages covered in Tamil Nadu, 92 villages have the ‘Superkidz’ program. Families pay small fees, which has led parents to take initiative in monitoring the work of the volunteers and to take an active interest in the progress of their children. Aid India also runs Superkidz centers in 534 non-BEP villages (a total of 1133 villages).
• With several years of material development and proven innovation, Pratham-Aid India has become a resource to several NGOs in Chennai and across Tamil Nadu. In both subsidized and paying partnerships, Aid India has trained and supported 11 other education-sector NGOs and 2 tuition centers, providing less-experienced organizations the tools to make their work more effective—indirectly reaching over 40,000 additional children.
• Pratham also works in affiliation with Vidyarambam in Tamil Nadu, an NGO focused on early childhood education in rural contexts. Vidyarambam runs learning centers across Tamil Nadu, emphasizing pre-school literacy but also providing learning support classes for primary school students in math, reading, and English.

Read India in Tamil Nadu

• In many villages, informal partnerships have been formed with school principals, so that Read India classes take place in government schools, encouraging a focus on learning level attainment in the classroom.
• Learning itself takes a unique form in Tamil Nadu, where the difficult Tamil language — an alphabet of 247 syllables! - requires Aid India’s focus on results, to ensure that children really learn the basics.
• Aid India’s learning centers also have a special focus on science, with experiments that encourage young children to think scientifically about the world around them.