Community Jameel and the Pratham Education Foundation announced today that 11,399 girls and women across India participated in the Pratham-Jameel Second Chance programme in its first year of operation.
Launched in 2023, the programme aims, annually, to help 10,000 girls and women who have dropped out of school to get back into school, finish formal education and realise their dreams. The Pratham-Jameel Second Chance programme scales up Pratham’s earlier efforts in this initiative, which launched in 2011.
Of the 11,399 participants in the first year, 7,877 learners successfully completed the programme’s main course and registered for the assessment, demonstrating a strong desire within communities for girls to complete their education and demonstrating the success of the programme in motivating and supporting the students.
In addition to completing the main course, 7,060 learners sat for exams between April and June 2024. A total of 4,788 passed and completed grade 10, bringing the pass percentage to 68% overall. With their grade 10 certificates, girls and women in the community are better able to access new opportunities in higher education, skills training and jobs.
During the year, the Pratham-Jameel Second Chance programme established four new stand-alone locations in India to serve learners in the programme, in addition to integrating into 29 existing locations where Pratham operates other learning activities.
The Pratham-Jameel Second Chance programme employs a flexible learning model that combines face-to-face learning with virtual engagement, accommodating the diverse needs of its learners.
55% of learners on the programme are over the age of 20, highlighting its crucial role in addressing the educational needs of adults seeking to complete their education later in life.
Renu Seth, head – girls and women programmes at the Pratham Education Foundation, said: “The Pratham-Jameel partnership supported more than 10,000 girls and women in the academic year 2023-2024. The 68% pass percentage renews our and their confidence, expressed in the desire to keep going -- for further study and in pursuing livelihood opportunities.”
Nader Iskandar Diab, head of programmes at Community Jameel, said: “The Pratham-Jameel Second Chance programme builds on Community Jameel’s mission to ensure that communities are able to thrive. By supporting women and girls and empowering them to continue their education, the programme will grant them the skills needed to access opportunities that will enable them to transform their lives and the communities in which they live.”
Pratham is a longstanding partner of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the research centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that Community Jameel has supported and partnered with since 2005. Among many areas of collaboration, J-PAL has conducted rigorous evaluations of Pratham’s ‘teaching at the right level’ (TaRL) approach to remedial classes at schools in India, demonstrating its effectiveness in helping fallen-behind pupils catch up with their peers.
Taking the evidence of its effectiveness, Pratham and J-PAL have scaled up TaRL - which can teach a child to read in just 50 days, reaching millions of children across India and now in 12 countries in Africa. Pratham has independently taken this forward by taking TaRL to more than 5 other countries beyond sub-Saharan Africa.
