Better learning and teaching outcomes are at the centre of a good education system
That’s why at the Azim Premji Foundation, we help contribute to improving the standard and efficiency of the country’s government schools. We fortify our intent with valuable insights and knowledge that we derive from our vast presence in the field and experience of working on the ground with teachers in their classrooms. Both at the state and national levels, our findings and experiences inform meaningful policy changes in school education.
Our collaborations with central and state governments make the Foundation an active partner in the area of policy drafting, curriculum and textbook development and design, assessment reform, capacity development of senior functionaries and institutional improvement.
A milestone in our current collaborations with the Government of India is our contribution to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework (2022). Our teams have played a significant part in the development of the NCF, which, over the next 15 to 20 years, will drive teaching and learning in all the 15 lakh government and private schools in India. The NCF will be the basis of changes in syllabi, textbooks and examinations in all national and state boards.
A part of the NCF is Jaadui Pitara, an exemplar of teaching-learning materials (TLMs) that we have jointly developed with our collaborators. These TLMs, in the form of toys, games, puzzles, puppets, posters and playbooks, are useful in enabling play-based learning for children between 3 and 8 years of age. The kit also consists of a handbook for teachers that will help them achieve a range of curricular goals under the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022.
Our field teams from the School of Continuing Education and University Research Centre (SCE-URC) work across 17 states in India to support their governments in multiple areas and with several target groups.
We are closely involved in implementing reforms in the National Education Policy (NEP) along with policy-level work in the development of curriculum frameworks and position papers. A range of our work in this regard includes the following: material development, capacity development of teachers and teacher educators, state board examination reforms, and Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) reforms in all eight states of Northeast India; development of learning materials for primary schools in Arunachal Pradesh; capacity development of senior education functionaries with six-month professional development programmes in Tamil Nadu; and working with teachers, school principals and zonal leadership of 83 Srinagar Municipal Corporation primary schools in Kashmir in order to boost enrolment rate and quality of teaching and learning.
Government functionaries form an important group we continuously work with. Capacity building of senior government officials is one of our focus areas along with assessment reforms. This includes Board Examination reforms, classroom-based assessments, assessments of socioemotional learning and teacher assessments, and teacher eligibility tests and processes for teacher recruitment.
