Ignis Careers

Ignis Careers was established as a social enterprise providing capacity-building programs for teachers in government and affordable private schools. Ignis implements support programs for affordable private schools and government schools that to students from poor and under-privileged families, which uniquely integrates life-skills instruction with a culturally relevant and age-appropriate English language and STEM curriculum.

Our Vision: To empower learners from deprived communities gain access to wider career opportunities by promoting life skills and purposeful learning, and thereby break the cycle of poverty. Towards this end, we partner with schools and colleges in under-served communities in designing and developing capacity building programs.

Our Mission: Break away from rote learning and passive teaching practise and set a culture of active and collaborative learning practice to provide our beneficiaries with a purposeful educational experience.

We reach and empower school leaders, teachers and children in socially disadvantaged communities to understand their need and communicate the benefits for improving the quality of education.

We design innovative, affordable and culturally relevant English and Life Skills programs for the disadvantaged communities delivered through experiential and joyful learning approach.

Our Impact Goals are aligned with UN SDGs: Quality Education; No Poverty; Gender Equality; Reduced Inequality; Partnerships for the Goals.

Rennis Joseph, who has 18 years of experience in education, working across sectors, from kindergarten to higher education at the tertiary level. His soles in the organization include:

• Leading the team according to the mission and vision of the organization;
• Overseeing the key functions of HR and finance;
• Guiding research and development activities for the services and engagements offered by the company and ensuring it adheres to the stated mission and vision;
• Facilitating fund-raising and maintaining investor relationships.

Leadership Team: Ignis is led by Rennis Joseph, who has 18 years of experience in education, working across sectors, from kindergarten to higher education at the tertiary level. Our senior executives Bhargav Y., Manal Doshi, Rani Joseph, and Sonia Pippin have been training people across this spectrum. Sonia, who heads HR also brings in corporate expertise after her stint in Microsoft.

Research and Design Expertise: At the core of Ignis, is a research team that has been designing programs for different age groups and cultures.

Collaborations: We have worked in diverse cultural landscapes by partnering with non-profits like Naandi Foundation and Deshpande Foundation. We have also designed unique programs for adolescent girls, for the Naandi Foundation. We have adapted our programs to suit urban, rural and tribal communities incorporating their cultural dimensions.

Life Skills Focused: All our programs incorporate life skills as laid out by UNICEF and WHO.

Ignis has also been supporting organizations to design and implement hybrid models. We designed the hybrid model including digital integration for the state of Andhra Pradesh through our partnership with APSSDC.

Scale: Ignis currently working in 6 states of India directly, and have offices in 9 cities.We have so far worked with nearly
12,000 schools training 8000 teachers and 310,000 students.

Proven Impact Model: We have been analyzing our impact model every year. Our investors like Acumen, Yunus Social Business and IIT-Kanpur have been guiding us in this regard. Our leadership team has been part of various training programs at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

English, Life Skills and STEM education for students from vulnerable communities in affordable private schools and government schools

The world is facing an education crisis. Millions of children worldwide, graduate without the ability to effectively apply the fundamental skills of numeracy and literacy in their every day lives. This is a far cry from the supposed aim of education to help these students build a fulfilling career. This divide is more marked in the low-cost private schools and state funded schools that cater to the largely underserved and poorer sections of society.

The situation in India is particularly egregious for children from marginalized and underprivileged communities studying in government and affordable private schools. Many of those who stay in school do not learn at grade-appropriate levels. An ASER report found that 73% of Indian students in grade 8 can only read at grade 2 levels. Another National employability report for engineers states that 80% of the large number of engineering graduates are unemployable with lack of English skills being a major impediment. 

Education in India is mostly based on rote-learning, leaving students with meaningless certificates without equipping them for life or providing them with problem solving skills. Without any real skills, students continue the culture of rote learning leaving them unemployable. Recent reports have revealed that overall 50% of the youth are left unemployable despite receiving tertiary level education in various fields. This perpetuates the vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty.

This situation has been further aggravated by the COVID 19 crisis that resulted in school closures across the nation. Many of the children from vulnerable communities were unable access the social safety net that access to education could provide. According to UNICEF, nearly 290 million school going children in India were affected. Annual Status of Education Report 2020 (ASER) found that 30% of the learners were unable to access any form of remote learning. Bulk of these were in rural and peri-urban vulnerable communities.

According to a field study by Azim Premji University, there was nearly 90% key skill loss among students. Drop-out rates increased and nearly two years after, nearly 75% of the students from these communities have not returned to school. Most of them were first -generation learners with little guidance or models for educational achievement from their social circle that they can emulate.

Many of these vulnerable students are likely to permanently fall through the safety-net that education provides. There is already evidence that many have been recruited into child labor and girls coerced into early marriages, wiping out years of gains through education. This lost generation of children will accelerate the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

Since 2014, Ignis has served over 312,000 students, primarily from poor and underserved communities, and trained over 12050 teachers across 1550 schools. A lean-data study conducted by Acumen revealed that nearly 80% of the students that Ignis support are from low-income families that earn less than USD 6/day, according to a lean data study by Acumen.

Ignis has been working with under-served communities on two fronts:

1. low-cost private schools that cater to nearly 130 million learners in India; and
2. government run schools.

We focus on activity-based learning and encourage group projects, classroom interactions and adopt a participatory approach to learning. We prioritize conceptual understanding rather than rote-based learning. We ensure personal attention for all students. We believe that a culturally relevant purposeful education that prioritizes meta-learning skills and critical thinking will provide students from hitherto deprived communities with the required tools to pursue higher education and make informed choices about their careers. This will ultimately help them break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

Our model for low-cost private schools involves building teacher capacity through year-long training support and mentoring to deliver life-skills instruction with a culturally relevant and age-appropriate English language curriculum. This English and Life Skills (ELSL) curriculum has 8 levels designed for the K-10 segment. The program encourages teachers to use student-centric, activity-based teaching methodologies for students to better understand and internalize concepts, and use them in real life. Since the COVID pandemic, we have also included STEM instruction that uses live demonstrations and practical applications to help students gain a fundamental grasp of the principles of maths and science. The engagement costs an average of USD 10/- per student per year.

With government schools, we raised grants or collaborated with non-profits to provide learning support through a Teacher Fellow program that recruits and trains unemployed graduates and teacher aspirants from the community and attach them to the school as a supplementary teacher. Recruiting the Teacher Fellows from the community ensures dedication and ownership.

In the wake of the school closures resulting from the COVID pandemic, we launched a community based hybrid learning model that integrated remote learning through ZOOM and Google Classroom, and mobilized local teachers to gather students and pool devices to access learning. We were able to reach 3600 students through this program.

Our programs ensure access to learning to purposeful education to the most vulnerable. This has been prevented students from dropping out and become more confident in their pursuit of education and careers.

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Ignis uses lean data studies and longitudinal surveys to measure both the short-term and long-term socio-economic impact of our engagements. These impact studies may be conducted in-house or by independent organization.

Short term impacts: For short-term impact among the beneficiaries, we focus on indicators like, over-all academic performance, gender distribution in school enrolments and school enrolment rates. We also monitor the improvement in academic performance in class 10 school leaving exams.

We measure learning outcomes in terms of academic performance 3 times a year. Parent surveys are conducted at the end of every academic year.

We also periodically have third-party assessments of our student beneficiaries against control groups to ensure that our program is objectively evaluated and it adheres to the specified deliverables.

Long-term impacts: Longitudinal studies help us gauge the socio-economic impact of our engagements in terms of gender parity in schools, rate of enrolment in higher education, rate of employment, quality of colleges that the students enroll in, and declines in the number of early marriages, particularly among girls. These are compared with state and national averages.

We conducted lean data studies among parents and students in 2017 and 2018. This was conducted by 60_Decibels, and funded by Acumen. We are currently preparing for a survey among teachers, and this is supported by Yunus Social Business. Ignis regularly interact with our clients and stakeholders on the benefits and scope of improvement of our services.

Acumen Fund: Acumen Fund had conducted a lean-data social impact study of Ignis engagements in schools. A summary of the findings are provided below:

• 95% of parents reported an improvement in the child’s quality of life since Ignis’ intervention in the child’s school.
• 85% of the parents reported positive impact across different facets of personal growth and development such as inquisitiveness, confidence, peer to peer interaction.
• 85% of the parents found positive changes across six facets of personal development, growth and language performance.
• 66% of the parents reported overall improvement in English Skills such as reading, writing and speaking.
• Parents have also reported that children have an increased interest and improvement in other subjects after Ignis’ intervention in the school.

Longitudinal Study: A preliminary analysis of a longitudinal study of the impact of a prolonged engagement (4 years) at Banapuram village in Khammam district, Telangana, conducted by Ignis revealed the following:

• Ignis has been working for 8 years in Govt. schools in Banapuram, a remote village
• Enrolment doubled from 104 students (2010) to 240 students (2018)
• Gender parity in enrolment achieved from 38% in 2010
• 90% enrolment in higher education, against national average of 24% 

These vindicate our theory of change, as higher enrolment in higher education would lead to better employability. Ignis programs thus goes beyond classroom pedagogy to actually deeper social impacts in the community of the students enrolled in the program.

As a social enterprise, it becomes essential for us to gauge the socio-economic impact of our programs and engagements on our customers and target beneficiaries. This will aid in ensuring that our programs adhere to the objectives for the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as envisioned in our mission statement. Identifying, tracking, measuring and monitoring the metrics of various performance indicators of our customers and beneficiaries will enable us to continue to provide cost-effective and impactful products and engagements. For an organization such as ours, it would be necessary to monitor a large number of indices across a whole range of stake holders:

• Students: Since we are primarily and education services provider, we would need to effectively monitor the performance of the students enrolled in our programs. This will include evaluation of both academic and life-skill indicators based on established norms. Since our curriculum also emphasizes the development of meta-learning skills, the students' performance in subjects other than those covered through our engagement will also become significant.
• Teachers: A major portion of our engagements involve building capacity among teachers in affordable private schools and government schools. We train them in the use of participatory, activity-based teaching methodologies to enable students to grasp concepts and use them 

1. What is the overall impact of Ignis engagements on the students' academic performance in all subjects?
2. How can we measure the impact of our teacher training programs on the teachers and the methodologies that they use?
3. How effective are digital tools, as part of a hybrid curriculum delivery system, for the classroom and in teacher training?
4. How viable would a STEM support program for students be?

Foundational research can help us to plan new educational engagements by providing insights into the needs, interests, and challenges of learners and educators, as well as the best practices and strategies for effective teaching and learning. Key areas would include

• Curriculum development and pedagogic practices;
• Local Socio-economic and academic indices;
• Development of learning material;
• Community based socio-cultural studies;
• Community based economic studies.

Formative research of information obtained directly from beneficiary communities and stakeholders, to help design and develop:

• Help to create and maintain research registries by seeking stakeholder perspectives early in the process
• Evaluate sourcing, deploying and effectiveness of digital tools in in-school and after-school community based educational engagements;
• Design and develop formative assessment practices that are intended to guide students’ learning processes and improve students’ learning outcomes;
• Design and develop culturally-appropriate education programs for underprivileged and marginalized communities by learning and incorporating their culture, building trust, and promoting program acceptance.

Summative research will help evaluate the outcomes and impacts of our engagements during and after implementation. It can help us:

• identify and monitor the impact of our engagements and ensure its adherence to our stated development goals;
• evaluate the impact of our teacher training programs, their adoption of innovative teaching methodologies and the impact on the academic performance of the students;
• measure overall performance of the school through indicators such as drop-out/attrition rates of students and teachers, retention of students and teachers, academic performance, etc.; survey and measure the larger socio-economic impact of our educational engagements on the community with particular emphasis on gender parity and overall education levels.

The output for research will help us 

• develop better and more effective products and services; 
• develop the elements and functionality for customer validated synchronous and asynchronous hybrid multi-directional high participation platform  for curriculum delivery for the students and teacher training;
• design a comprehensive wireframe for the development of a robust, easily accessible online platform that will provide a complementary learning experience;
• gauge customer needs, product viability, pricing, competition to  develop a curriculum for STEM and other academic and life skills curricula;

Short-term outcomes:

• Customer validated wireframe for the design and development of a robust, scalable online platform for curriculum delivery and teacher training;