According to Pratham, a child’s education often ends because a child doesn’t know how to cope with the school system and poorer parents don’t have the time or the capacity to be supportive. In the current system a lot of learning takes place at home before the child is ready for school. Children from less privileged backgrounds are at a disadvantage here. Therefore Pratham sets up Balwadis or pre-schools to get children habituated to going to a school-like atmosphere. At the Balwadis children learn stories and basics of reading and writing to prepare them for actual school.

Pratham also pioneered a breakthrough in teaching methodology that has enabled it to reduce the time taken for a child to become literate from an average of 18 months to 6. Literacy here is not just “learning to read”, but actually reading with comprehension and reflection. Therefore “reading to learn”. In addition maths including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division is learnt.

The major impact of Pratham is that in addition to preparing children for school through Balwadis, it has brought this level of literacy to 1 million children in just 4 years.

An Ekal Vidyalaya costs just Rs.365 per year per school to run. For the first 2 years the Ekal Vidyalaya foundation sponsors the school. By the end of the 6th year, village ownership increases so much that it takes over the entire funding for the school.

It has opened 12,000 schools in tribal areas where education rarely reaches. In areas where Ekal has schools for 5 years or more, 72% of Ekal students have been mainstreamed into government schools.

What makes Ekal unique is its concept of one-teacher schools, using youth from the same village community.

By the year 2012, Ekal aims to create 100,000 such schools across the country.