Akshar Foundation

Meta-teaching is a structured method designed to guarantee that every young child receives essential daily personalized assistance and motivation for a prosperous Early Education experience. Within this approach, experienced teachers instruct and enlist older students as teaching aides. Adult educators oversee and educate these senior students in the art of teaching. The advantages of meta-teaching extend to adult instructors, student coaches, and, most importantly, the young learners they support.

Numerous children lack the necessary home assistance for academic success. Akshar guarantees that each young student receives daily individual guidance from an older peer, with the supervision of an adult educator. Youngsters eagerly embrace the opportunity for one-on-one learning with a teenager, as teens often establish a more relatable connection with them compared to adults. This approach ensures that children receive vital academic support, bridging the support gap many face outside of school.

Established in 2016 in Assam, India, Akshar Forum is a model school with 100 students, serving as a testing ground for innovative teaching approaches aligned with India's National Education Policy of 2020 (NEP 2020). Akshar has initiated a project to introduce the NEP 2020 framework into 100 Government schools across Assam within three years, collaborating with the Government of India. This partnership provides training and resources to equip Government teachers in these 100 Assam schools to transition to the Indian Education Model. These teachers are trained in holistic NEP 2020 practices, including individual student monitoring, skill-based grouping, peer learning, instructional technology, vocational/entrepreneurship training, and sustainable community development.

Numerous adolescents face immense pressure to abandon their education in favour of immediate earning opportunities. Akshar addresses this challenge by offering employment to students and compensating them with redeemable points. These points serve as currency for acquiring essential items like educational supplies, everyday necessities, hygiene products, and clothing. This approach empowers at-risk teenagers to engage in part-time work to meet their fundamental needs, thus encouraging them to remain in school instead of pursuing periodic labour. It instills the valuable lesson that educational persistence leads to greater earnings while fostering professionalism, confidence, and a robust work ethic along the way.

Akshar has created a cost-free software based on Kolibri by Learning Equality, a U.S.-based charitable organisation. The Akshar Kolibri app enables individualized learning experiences for students, allowing them to log in with unique profiles. This system tracks each student's specific learning level and offers tailored exercises in their native language, Hindi, and English.
This approach not only imparts digital literacy to students without access to technology at home but also fosters higher engagement through interactive learning games, stories, exercises, and assessments, surpassing conventional learning materials. Furthermore, older students are introduced to the realms of coding and robotics, broadening their educational horizons.

Under Akshar's NEP model, students earn points primarily through mentoring younger peers and also by fulfilling various roles such as tending gardens, serving school lunches, providing basic first aid, tending to animals, printing educational materials, recycling plastics, crafting classroom furniture, and repairing electrical fixtures, among other responsibilities. These multifaceted contributions encompass tasks such as constructing furniture when needed, repairing malfunctioning fans, producing worksheets for teachers, and providing care for injured children. This holistic approach empowers students to actively engage in the upkeep and improvement of their educational environment while fostering a sense of responsibility and community involvement.