Gyan Shala Urban Slums Classrooms

October 21, 2013

With EAC support, the Gyan Shala Urban Slums Classrooms project is working to reach a substantial number of children in India’s urban slums who remain out of school despite significant increases in access to primary schools through the government’s Education for All Movement.

The project is enrolling new cohorts of children by creating and re-launching single classroom elementary schools in seven cities in the states of Gujarat, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The project aims to enroll 69,200 OOSC over the course of four years. The project directly enrolls OOSC into first grade in a four-year period by creating over 2,000 new classes and re-launching nearly 500 classes. In addition to reducing the number of OOSC, the project is expected to result in improved student learning.

The Gyan Shala model has three sources of funding: government, private donors, and parents. The path to long-term sustainability of the program is for state governments to take on the costs upon recognizing its crucial role in providing low-cost, high-quality education to OOSC who have fallen through the cracks in the government system. Gyan Shala already has agreements in place with the governments of Bihar and Gujarat.