Professional (Higher) Education in India is available only in English though 70% of our kids study in regional language FREE government schools. Most of these kids, despite being academically bright, cannot opt for professional courses because they are not confident of passing these English-only courses. The surest way of exiting the poverty trap is to avail education that lends jobs. But millions of our kids either drop-out or cannot avail such education at all.

So why is it that despite having schools for all, we have not been able to democratize English education? Why is it that more than half of our rural kids in grade 8 cannot read simple English sentences though English is a formal subject from grade 1?

Our work at the grassroots led us to pin the problem on the existing pedagogy - All incumbent English learning solutions necessitate the need of a fluent English speaking teacher. Thus, if a teacher cannot speak English s/he cannot teach English. It is indeed very logical (that is how all languages are learnt) but not very practical in the context where our teachers teach & stay because in these communities no-one speaks English. Our government school teacher is a product of the same constrained education system and does not have either the skills or the confidence to teach English.

At LeapForWord, we have designed an alternate pedagogy that eliminates the need of an English speaking teacher in every classroom. Rather than looking at English as a language, we can look at it as a subject like Maths, Science, History etc. which across the world are taught in the local language.

We developed a Translation algorithm that translates English into any Sanskrit based language (>20 major languages originate from Sanskrit). On top of this we developed a product called The English Literacy Program (ELP).

The USP:

This 4-level, structured, modular & measurable program can be taught in any LOCAL LANGUAGE irrespective of the teacher’s existing English speaking capabilities. By making English teaching independent of English speaking, we believe that every willing teacher in any part is now capable of effectively developing specific English capabilities in the students.

Our mission is to see increasing number of students from regional language government schools participate in Higher Education (professional courses) which is available only in English. LeapForWord started with 800 teachers in a single block (Taluka) in the AY '15-'16 and in ~5 years expanded our outreach to teachers in all the 358 blocks in the state.

Our target for the AY '20 - '21 is to have atleast 3 teachers in every cluster (there are ~5700 clusters in Maharashtra. Each cluster has ~12-15 schools) committing to make their class English literate using the English Literacy Program. Expected student impact (number of students who will undergo the program) is ~500,000

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