Ennum Ezhuthum

An initiative by Tamil Nadu Department of School Education

Vision: To attain universal foundational literacy and numeracy skills for children in Std. 3 by 2025.

Year of launch: 2021
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About the Project

The Ennum Ezhuthum Mission is the government led programme to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes among elementary school students within TN government schools. Madhi works with Samagra Shiksha and the Tamil Nadu State Council for Educational Research and Training as a partner to collaboratively create holistic solutions that will aid the implementation of the Ennum Ezhuthum Mission.

We engage with all levels of stakeholders from the state, district and block levels to the teachers and leaders of each school in our work towards the Mission. Our partnership with the state is a catalytic model, where we support with the implementation of the programme while the vision and planning is led by the teachers and state resource groups.

6T Model

Teaching Learning Material (TLM): Skill based, culturally relevant, teaching learning material mapped to state syllabi and international standards

Training: Tech-enabled training courses to improve teacher competencies

Tracking: Collection and analyses of meaningful data to drive informed policy decisions

Tutoring at home: Empowering the parent community with information and tools to support their children’s early learning needs

Targeted communication: Communication and advocacy efforts designed to increase awareness about the criticality of foundational learning among all relevant stakeholders

Technology: Simple, contextual, and scalable tech tools are at the heart of what we build

“The Ennum Ezhuthum Mission will ensure foundational literacy and numeracy, and will be implemented to ensure that by 2025 all students in Tamil Nadu by age 8 are able to read with comprehension and possess critical arithmetic skills.”
– Hon’ble State Finance Minister, Thiru. Dr. PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan, at the Tamil Nadu Budget 2021 Speech, Aug 13, 2021

Foundational Learning Over WhatsApp (FLOW)

Objective: To provide daily educational content directly to students and parents in Tamil Nadu in the context of COVID-19 related school closures

Year of Launch: 2020. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic

In response to a rising need for low contact education, Foundational Learning Over WhatsApp (FLOW) aims to deliver continued education on foundational learning skills to children of grades 1, 2 and 3 in Tamil Nadu, while addressing the barriers to accessing technology in low income households of India. By leveraging simple and cost-efficient technology, the programme is designed to work with infrequent internet connectivity, in local languages, and for those unfamiliar with the technology used.

Madhi Foundation is collaborating with Equitas Gurukul to launch this programme across their schools situated in 8 districts and we currently provide daily worksheets and videos to over 1800 children with the support of over 100 teachers.

State Educators and Executive Development Programme (SEED)

Objective: To empower educators and executives and equip them with the skills to meet the demands of virtual classrooms, online project delivery and administration

Year of Launch: 2020. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic

SEED hopes to bridge a critical skill gap in delivering educational content in the age of virtual classrooms and the context of education in a post-COVID world. Through SEED, Madhi will co-create with the state, capacity development content around digital project management, team management, teaching online, conducting classroom observations, and using Google Suite and MS Office. This will be delivered through virtual webinars and will be supplemented by a proven peer learning support model developed by Madhi. SEED emphasises experiential learning, offering participants the opportunity to submit their work and receive feedback. Each participant also receives a certificate recognising their effort towards honing their competencies.

Over 300 State and District level officials have already signed up for this 10-part virtual programme.

Happy Learners

Objective: To ensure that every child, irrespective of access to internet or smartphones, is able to continue learning at home.

Year of Launch: 2020. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic

In light of the ongoing school closures and lockdown, Madhi Foundation, in partnership with the Government of Tamil Nadu is implementing this new low-cost tech-enabled programme to deliver daily learning content to children with little or no access to internal and technology. Happy Learners ensure home learning in collaboration with teachers using a combination of IVRS based phone calls and printed books and worksheets, thus ensuring equitable reach. A digital tracker has been designed for the teachers to monitor the progress of their children on a weekly basis. With the support of teachers, children have the opportunity to learn at their own pace, clear doubts and be assessed regularly from their homes.

The project has been launched across Chennai and Tiruvannamalai districts, where over 9500 children have been provided with Happy Learners’ Books, and over 450 teachers have been onboarded onto the programme.

Veedum Vizhippum

VV logo for website

Objective: To increase parental and community engagement and awareness on the importance of foundational literacy and numeracy, and empower the community with the tools to support children in attaining strong foundational learning skills.

Year of launch: 2022

Veedum Vizhippum will bring together the community of parents and caregivers in Tamil Nadu to build awareness around the criticality of foundational learning, strengthening their agency by equipping them with knowledge, skills and mindsets to advocate for their children’s right to an equitable quality of foundational learning.

The project will focus on building awareness of foundational learning goals among caregivers, and ensuring parental agency through their participation in both learning at home and events and gathering at the community level. Veedum Vizhippum will also engage in advocacy through community ambassadors who will help parents gain clarity on what to demand from whom and how.

Sandbox Schools

Objective: To set up 5 model schools that act as incubation centres for the latest research on foundational learning pedagogy

Year of launch: 2021 (proposed)

While Madhi works with the government to implement large-scale interventions, there are many ideas that need to be validated in a controlled sandbox environment before being set up for scale. With the aim of developing such laboratory schools, we will work with 5 government schools over the course of a year, and evaluate the proof of excellence of Madhi’s theory of change. The model schools will serve as the ideal learning environment for pedagogical and administrative initiatives, the outcomes of which will be relevant for typical under-resourced government schools in Tamil Nadu, and elsewhere in India. The Sandbox Schools pilot programme will feed valuable research and knowledge back into the larger ecosystem with the support of our Centre for Research and Innovation on Foundational Learning (CRIFL) team.

Foundational Learning Improvement Programme (FLIP)

Vision: To reimagine school systems and eliminate the foundational learning crisis in Tamil Nadu by 2030.

Year of launch: 2019

Identifying the foundational learning crisis in India as a key focus area, we are working towards improving critical learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy among children through our Foundational Learning Improvement Programme (FLIP). Through targeted interventions based on a 6T approach, FLIP supports the government in improving teaching learning materials, teacher training, and tracking of data by engaging with multiple facets of the issue and all levels of stakeholders in an integrated manner, leveraging technology to amplify reach and impact.

Literacy and Language Development Programme (LLDP)

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Objective: To improve the quality of transaction in English as a subject and a language

Year: 2018-2019

Literacy and Language Development Programme (LLDP) is a system-capacity building programme that pioneers the use of technology and data to bring about tangible improvements in grade-level English literacy skills among primary school students in Tamil Nadu. The programme aimed to improve the language proficiency of teachers using immersive and experiential teaching techniques, and make language learning an organic and effortless process for the teachers and the students. This was done through contextualising the teaching learning content and training processes, moderating the learning pace for the teachers, making the programme immersive and leveraging technology to gain project delivery insights.

In the academic year 2018-19, LLDP was implemented across Grade 1 classrooms in approximately 1800 schools in 2 districts, Chennai and Tiruvannamalai. In 2018, Madhi also collaborated with the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) to contribute towards the English textbook revision project in Tamil Nadu.

Transformational Academic Programme (TAP)

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Objective: To transform classrooms and teaching-learning processes to improve student learning outcomes

Year: 2016-2018

The Transformational Academic Programme (TAP) was designed with a theory of change that when ready-to-use toolkits, which are aligned to the state syllabus are coupled with experiential and modularized training, teachers will be exposed to strong pedagogic strategies that will lead to improved learning outcomes.

TAP reached over 2000 children across 15 schools in Chennai.