User:Azimpremjifoundation/sandbox

Azim Premji Foundation is a not-for-profit entity set up in 2001 with the objective to contribute to a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society in India. The Foundation strives to facilitate deep, large scale and long-term impact on the quality and equity of education in India, along with related development areas such as child health, nutrition, governance and ecology.

Azim Premji Foundation seeks to address these inter-related domains while keeping Education as a core area of focus. The four key strands of our work include: talent creation, knowledge creation, Network of Institutions and Social Pressure.

Talent Creation: Developing a critical mass of people with vision, competence and deep motivation to engage in social action. This includes developing fresh talent and building capacity in the existing talent of teachers, teacher educators, education functionaries and leaders and development professionals.

Knowledge Creation: Creating knowledge and evidence to provide deeper insights into the solutions to challenges in education and development in the Indian context and culture. Thus Create a culture of evidence based decisions in policy & program

Network of Institutions: Developing a network of institutions spread across the country that actively develop talent, build knowledge, and work for reform in education and allied developmental areas on a sustained basis.

Social Pressure: Through strong institutional networks, continuing education, field impact and awareness building, changing in the way that communities and functionaries think about issues in education and development and thus facilitate social pressure for improvement in quality and equity. Between 2001 and 2010, Azim Premji Foundation established strong Field Presence in 13 states at the district and block levels through its state offices and programs. The Foundation took up education quality improvement programs on a large scale in examination reforms, “whole school” programs, technology initiatives, community participation, talent development and capacity building. It developed deep relationships with Government at center, state, district and beyond to drive our programs. It developed extensive domain knowledge through rich field experience and extensive research. Today, it is one of the strong teams in Education in India. In these 10 years, the Foundation reached 2.5 million children at 20,000 schools in 13 Indian States.

Since 2010, building on its past body of work, the Foundation significantly scaled up talent development, knowledge creation & institutionalized impact through setting up Azim Premji University to fill critical gaps in Research, Degree Programs, Continuing Education and Field Institutions comprising State and District Institutes, Schools and Institute of Assessment and Accreditation.

The University offers Degree Programs in Education and Development, helps in building of existing talent in government and partners through continuing education and undertakes high quality and relevant research for knowledge creation.

State and District Institutes: Capacity building and grassroots level support of local communities in education / development  programs 	Schools: Demonstration and training schools for improving domain knowledge and practical experience 	Institute of Assessment and Accreditation: Create demand for assessment / accreditation driven quality improvements in the system

Network of Institutions

Large scale impact in education and development requires significant and sustained effort over many decades and can only be achieved through dynamic, permanent institutions that work towards improvements in education and allied developmental areas at multiple levels. Leveraging its rich experience of working at the grass-roots level for over a decade, several institutions established by Foundation have been working together in an integrated manner to facilitate such improvements. These are:

Azim Premji University: Azim Premji University is a critical element of this integrated strategy especially in the area of talent development and knowledge creation through an institutionalized approach

Azim Premji State and District Institutes: These are vibrant, high quality centers located in district towns and state capitals of select Indian states. These institutes play a leading role in an institution led approach to catalyzing social change and offer on the ground support in all aspects of education and allied development domains. They are the institutional anchors of education of a district and provide the fulcrum to work in other related domains (such as nutrition, governance etc.) and serve as expertise centers for our schools, affiliated schools and partner activities.

Institute for Assessment and Accreditation (IAA): IAA is a critical component of Azim Premji Foundation’s mission to have deep, at-scale and institutionalized impact on the quality of education in India. IAA achieves this by spreading awareness of, and creating demand for, assessment / accreditation-driven quality improvements in the system.

Demonstration Schools: A limited number of demonstration schools have been established for the specific and limited purposes of providing learning spaces for the University, the IAA and the State/District Institutes and supporting specific elements of the Foundation’s strategy. These schools provide good quality education at costs and under constraints similar to those of rural government schools. The seamless integration of these institutions to catalyze change is central to our strategy. This happens in multiple ways such as talent development, knowledge creation and the integration of theory and practice. Details of these institutions are provided in the respective sections.