Saarthi Education

India and many developing countries are struggling to provide quality early childhood education to millions of children. Numerous reports and surveys have highlighted that children in early years are struggling in language and cognitive domains. Due to lack of education, confidence, and awareness in parents in low-income households, a child does not receive quality learning at home before joining the school. 

Research suggests that during early age, parents have six times the effect on their child’s achievement than does the school. Saarthi empowers parents across low-income communities to provide an environment of excellent early learning and care for their children at home. We provide learning resources and personal one on one support to parents through an innovative blend of offline and technology-driven products. 

Our solution has shown positive early signs of impact and could revolutionise the way early childhood education is delivered in households across the world. 

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s survey placed India last among a group of 45 countries on the quality of  pre-school, early childhood education environment. The India Early Childhood Impact study by UNICEF (a longitudinal study from 2011-2016) states that children are struggling in language and cognitive domains. The gap between what children can do and what is expected of them (when they join school) appears early and widens rapidly as children progress from one grade to another.

A crucial way to improve the quality of early learning is through parents. Engaging parents is in fact the ‘only intervention around narrowing the gap in achievement between children from different backgrounds which has a strong enough evidence base to warrant further investment and work’ (Goodall 2017 p1; See and Gorard 2013). However, due to lack of education, confidence, and awareness in parents in low-income households, a child does not receive quality learning at home before joining the school. A child coming from a low-income background is at a serious disadvantage and is set behind her peers even before stepping into the school. Low-income households lack adequate resources and developmentally appropriate practices by parents for intellectual and emotional stimulation of the children.  

Our typical beneficiary is an urban family with annual income below USD 2200. We work with children in the age group of 3 to 7 years and their primary caregivers. The children are either attending a government run day care centre or a privately owned pre-school.  In majority of the cases either the mother or the father is playing the role of the primary caregiver. The mother of the child is educated till 8th grade or 10th grade. She is a housewife, or works as a domestic help in other households. Often, she is the primary caregiver of the child. The father is usually educated till class 12th, or college (diploma). He works as a labourer in a factory, or as a trader/street vendor.

We partner with schools (both government and private) to reach out to the children and their parents. Each family is attached to a trained coach by our organisation. The coaches study the context of each family carefully and provide personalised support using technology and offline resources. The coaches measure child’s learning levels and parents’ motivation, awareness and confidence. Based on the analysis, the family receives appropriate resources and further coaching. 

After conducting rigorous research and pilots, we have been able to strengthen our hypothesis - that in order to improve the early learning outcomes in low income households, we need to provide developmentally appropriate resources to children and personalised coaching to the caregivers. We use a careful blend of online and offline components to create a highly effective and scalable intervention for our families which includes:

1. Activity Kits - We work with early childhood experts to create developmentally appropriate activities focused on building foundational literacy and numeracy skills of children (3 to 7 years). We have a set of ~550 activities spread over 36 kits. The activities are designed while keeping in mind the profiles of our caregiver (low-levels of education). The activity kits are delivered to parents at their doorstep every month.

1. Online instructions - Since parents are not highly educated, activity kits are complemented with byte-sized instructions delivered to parents via multiple online channels. Mother with access to smartphones receive video based activity instructions over WhatsApp or a mobile app (android). Mothers with access to a feature phone receive instructions via pre-recorded calls (IVRs) at a pre-decided time (chosen by the mother) on every alternate day. The instructional calls/notifications also act as a nudge to remind parents about activities. 

1. House visits - The crucial part of parent coaching is fulfilled via a trained coach also called the Relationship Manager (RM). This RM is based out of  the same community as the families that we work with. She is a female with relevant field experience and is trained on parent involvement in early childhood. She visits each family at a minimum frequency of once a month and delivers coaching sessions using videos. Each RM has a mobile app to collect data and feedback from the parents. They also use the app to access the usage history of the family to accordingly modify their session. 

1. On-call support: RMs also provide on-call support to the families. These calls focus on building motivation and supporting parents regarding activity related queries. Parents also use these calls to talk about other child behaviour related issues. 

Each family receives an activity kit every month, online instructions on alternate days, weekly calls and a monthly visit by their Relationship managers. We use mobile apps and CRMs to ensure the smooth functioning of the programme while using data to enrich the effectiveness of our delivery.