Changemakers 2024: Pratham CEO Rukmini Banerji is a Force for Change

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 Kenyan 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 International 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 64, 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.

While doing the rounds of social sector organisations in and around Mumbai looking for job opportunities, a chance meeting with Madhav Chavan led her to join the founding team of Pratham that worked to improve learning outcomes at primary level municipal schools.

“I keep joking to Madhav I was never hired, so I can’t be fired,” says Banerji, recalling her early days in the organisation. Working with the local population with only a smattering of Marathi was not a deterrent. Over the years, Banerji and her team played a major role in designing and supporting large-scale partnerships with state governments to improve children’s learning outcomes.

Banerji recalls that while school enrolment was increasing due to government schemes, many children in primary classes struggled to read or do basic arithmetic. Interventions through the TaRL methodology helped many municipal schools bridge this learning gap.

The turning point came in 2005 when Pratham launched a country-wide annual research and assessment of learning outcomes for grade 3 students in government schools. Known as the Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) exercise, the initial findings confirmed weak learning outcomes in primary education systems. To help children acquire these skills, Banerji and her team devised a methodology that would evolve into TaRL.

Banerji subsequently became Pratham’s chief executive in 2015.

From Local to Global

Pratham executives recall that when the first Aser study was launched in 2006, several government officials declined to be at the launch ceremony. “The backlash and resistance to change in the education sector was on expected lines,” says Banerji. Over the years, Pratham has been working closely with many governments and government departments.

However, what helped Pratham hold its ground was data-backed field research. The TaRL methodology saw schools gradually improve scores over the years. These improvements were captured in subsequent studies. By 2010, many state governments, municipalities and non-profits in the education space were associated with Pratham’s teams to work on improving children’s foundational skills.

Pratham’s efforts also received international exposure in the work of Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The association began in 1999 when Banerjee and Duflo started studying Pratham’s teaching methodologies in municipal schools in Mumbai and Vadodara.

After 2010, requests started pouring in from international education institutions to understand and study Pratham’s training methodologies.

After five years in Africa, Pratham International is now looking at replicating the Africa model in South and Central America. The early experiences of pilots in these regions indicate that there is a need for and interest in the TaRL approach, she says.

Banerji received the Yidan Prize for Education Development in 2021.

In a blogpost, economist Lant Pritchett wrote: “First, Rukmini taught me that a commitment to education needs to start from love for the child”. He adds, “Learning by doing… and doing what has been learnt” has been a key factor in Banerji and her team’s success.

Social entrepreneur and founder of Climate Asia Satyam Vyas, who spent his early professional life at Pratham, says Banerji’s leadership at Pratham is akin to what Tim Cook was to Apple Inc. What does she think of Vyas’s analogy? Banerji smiles: “Many of our alumni make us look better than we are.”