Summary of our work

Wipro Applying Thought In Schools
Building capacity on the ground for education reform

This document gives a brief overview of our work, connecting it to the strategy and elaborating on the nature of work to meet each strategic imperative.

Strategic objectives and work on the ground

Build eco-system

Support new entrants (both individuals and organizations) into education reform

• The Wipro Education Fellowship provides a platform for individuals to engage in projects in education reform. This is an 18-month long engagement as part of which individuals work on specific assignments with our partner organizations in documentation, research or work on the ground. Along with this they go through various workshops and courses provided by some of our partner organizations that help them get a theoretical grounding in education and an understanding of the work happening across the country.
  Over the past 3 years we have onboarded 10 Fellows in this effort.
• We support new organizations working in education reform. The support is not only financial. We work with them along with our senior partner organizations and provide support in building capabilities, participation from senior educationists on the ground in work with their organization and mentoring framework available to us through our wide network of partners across the country.
  We have worked with 7 new organizations in this manner in the past 8 years.
• We sponsor individuals on some courses/workshops in education conducted by some of our partner organizations.

Strengthen network (by deepening engagement with partner organizations)

• Our engagement with partner organizations progressively deepens in terms of the nature of projects we do together. This relationship typically progresses from simple projects and interventions to holistic engagements with schools and school systems, research and eventually consultation for new organizations.
• Our annual Partner Forums and other courses and workshops conducted by partners help integrate this community of organizations and encourage learning and sharing of experiences and ideas.

Build capacity (of network by engaging with more diverse organizations working in different areas of education)

• Our partner network has some of the most renowned and talented organizations in the country. The portfolio of work being done by these organizations covers all areas of education. There is constant effort to engage with more organizations to deepen and strengthen the collective knowledge base.

Experiment and Learn

• We support holistic and deep engagements with schools to catalyze a change in school culture. This covers teaching-learning processes, assessment frameworks, school-parent engagement, curriculum reform, teaching-learning material improvement and administrative and management processes. The thought is to encourage the school to relook at all aspects of the school and help revamp the collective culture taking it towards being more democratic and inclusive.
  We have worked with 13 partner organizations in such holistic efforts.
• We support incisive experiments in specific areas like teacher trainings, school leader training, specific subject learning, action research, assessment etc to go deep into one area, understand it better and share it with a large audience of schools and educators. Our efforts in curricular research, developing learning standards for subjects, assessment for conceptual learning are examples of such efforts. These experiments are seen as inroads into the engagements with school holistically so these projects lead to holistic engagements with schools.
  We have worked with over 10 organizations in similar efforts.
• Through our projects we have engaged with more than 1000 schools, 10,000 educators and 30 social organizations across 17 states in the country.

Advocacy

• We have initiated a significant Educational Literature program. As part of this program we create good educational literature, commission books for children. we have also initiated a Good Books Advocacy program in partnership with Tulika Publishers to advocate the cause of good children's literature.
• We take up significant advocacy projects to advocate the cause of good education and these projects also provide means to schools, educators and educationists to understand a specific area and how it could be dealt with in schools. The recent example is student video interviews to understand better how children think and how this could be used to improve teaching-learning practices in schools.
• We regularly write in popular media on education to spread an understanding of how education can be and bring significant issues to the notice of larger citizenry.

Overall Assessment
As an Education reform initiative
Ours is one of the largest networks of civil society working in education and includes the most renowned and talented organizations across the country. We have the capabilities to provide mentorship, consulting, visibility and support to the organizations.
Our thoughtful and deliberate approach to the initiative and participation in a long gestation effort towards social change makes us unique as a CSR initiative. It also amply demonstrates our sincerity and commitment to education reform.
Contribution to school reform
We are supporting a diverse set of experiments and interventions that are holistic and deep to understand systemic change. These interventions have reached out to over a 1000 schools and more than 10,000 educators across the country across 17 states in the country.
Some of the schools we have supported now have the capability to help other schools in the vicinity through the resource centers.
Support new organizations
Many young, motivated and talented individuals and organizations struggle through a process of acquiring direction of thought, procuring funds to launch their work, getting a sense for the larger picture and building capabilities and capacity to sustain themselves over time.
Given the diversity of our partner base, depth of our relationships, collective understanding of education and our willingness to experiment and continuously learn from our experiments, we are encouraged to play a larger role in advocacy for good education.
Through our network we facilitate the much needed direction and support system to social organizations in their efforts towards education reform.

Eco-system
Our Partners’ Forum provides a platform for organizations to engage with others working on similar efforts in education reform across the country. This kind of forum did not exist before.
Advocacy
Our efforts in advocacy constantly make people aware of the limitations of the current education system and the need for every individual to contribute to changing the way education is seen.
For example, along with Educational Initiatives we did a research study of learning levels of children in the ‘top’ 142 schools in the 5 metros across the country. Around 42,000 children from grades 2, 4 and 6 were assessed on their conceptual understanding in maths, science and languages. The results of this study were published in India Today as a cover story in Nov 2006. This report triggered numerous responses from schools wanting to revisit their approaches and this catalyzed a series of such efforts from schools in reform.

Dissemination Advocacy
The Wipro Education Fellowship provides an opportunity for individuals to learn about education through work in specific assignments and interaction with a network of organizations and academicians across the country.