Pratham is an innovative learning organization created to improve the quality of education in India. Pratham Education Foundation was set up in 1995 with the aim of providing pre-school education to children in the slums of Mumbai city, and has grown since then to become a large non-governmental organisation that works to provide education to the underprivileged children of India, reaching millions of children annually across the country. To make its programmes sustainable and self-propelled in the long run, Pratham works closely with the school systems and the communities involved.

The ASER Centre approach has its roots in Pratham’s work across urban and rural India to help children acquire basic skills in reading and arithmetic. ASER Centre was established as an autonomous unit within the Pratham network in 2008. ASER surveys support and ascertain the level of enrollment in schools annually, observing trends and changes. It uses rigorous methods to generate evidence on scale on the outcome of social sector programmes and strengthens the link between evidence and action. It has been conducted every year since 2005, and is the largest household survey of children conducted in India by a citizen group.

Why they are the right choice for others:

• The only annual source of information regarding learning levels of children in India
• Conducted by citizens to hold the government accountable to their promises and budgets
• Creating a simple tool with a common framework and vocabulary to assess whether goals are being achieved, usable at scale and for other contexts