Reach to Teach (RTT) worked with communities and engaged with the education system in five districts of Gujarat for almost a decade. In 2018-2019, drawing upon all the expertise gathered in the field, we decided to become more strategic in our approach and focus on strengthening systems at the policy impact level and work directly with the Government of Gujarat’s Department of Education.
In July 2020, the Government of India launched the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. This is the first national education policy to be issued in 34 years. It sets out clear priorities for education at a policy level. Each state in India is required to draw up its action plan to roll out NEP 2020. Reach to Teach has realigned its priorities to reflect the NEP 2020 with the aim of being a partner of choice for states. We are now in the process of expanding our work to other geographies as part of our new strategy.
Our strategic objective is to be the partner of choice for state education departments. We seek to support state initiatives to design and implement state-wide system strengthening interventions. With the extensive field experience of the past decade, we aim to provide technical assistance and programme management support to states to improve educational outcomes.
Aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, Reach to Teach has integrated the essence of SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and SDG 17 (Partnership for the Goals) in its approach to strengthening teaching and learning.
Our focus is on achieving excellence in all our interventions and programmes. We are highly accountable for the investments made by the donors in improving the quality of education for children. Each programme of ours is monitored closely at every level; from its inception to the measurement of progress against plans and expected outcomes.
We also intend to ensure objective validation of our interventions and impact by third-party evaluation. To achieve these goals of monitoring and evaluation, the Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) team develops a theory of change and programme log frames for each of its programmes in coordination with the programme team. Indicators are developed for inputs, outputs, outcomes, and impact against which programme progress is measured. Qualitative and quantitative data is collated across the programme cycle on these indicators. Data dashboards inform about the progress and gaps and indicate course correction wherever needed.
We run small field projects as testbeds to pilot and demonstrate scalable, sustainable, and impactful interventions, models, products, resources etc. Through these, we draw insights to inform state policies and programmes for improving the quality of education in the key areas of:
Our interventions focus strongly on ensuring gender and social inclusion and accord maximum priority for the enrolment of marginalized children and children with special needs (CWSN). This is done by:
For equitable achievement, we disaggregate indicator targets by gender/social groups etc. We also recommend training schoolteachers, headteachers and system officials to identify school-based gender-related violence (SBGRV) and violence against CWSN, and to develop redressal mechanisms and guidelines for communities and schools to tackle such issues.
