Organization: The Akanksha Foundation
Country: India
Education level: Lower Secondary, Upper Secondary
Organization type: Nongovernmental organization
Family involvement: Strengthening Home Learning and Caregiving, Shifting Mindsets
Note: For more strategies from The Akanksha Foundation, see related strategies.
Overview
The Akanksha Foundation was founded in 1991 with the goal of delivering high-quality education to every child, regardless of the child’s background. Founder Shaheen Mistri, then an 18-year-old college student, realized how many thousands of children lacked access to a quality education. The organization began an after-school initiative to improve learning and well-being outcomes for disadvantaged students, which has now expanded to a network of 60 centers (Akanksha Foundation, n.d). The idea was simple: leverage underutilized spaces and support students with professional social workers and community volunteers. Realizing the need to work with government schools to make an impact at scale, the Akanksha School Project was established in 2007. The project works in collaboration with the Municipal Corporations of Mumbai and Pune, which govern the civic needs and infrastructure in each city.
Both Mumbai and Pune are cities in the state of Maharashtra, which is India’s second-most populous state and home to 18.9 million primary- and secondary-level students enrolled in 113,526 public and private schools (Government of Maharashtra School Education and Sports Department, n.d.). Despite a poverty rate 4 percentage points lower than the national average and an enrollment rate 4 percentage points above the national average for students in classes 1-10 (N. Aayog, 2020), Maharashtra still has a significant problem with school dropout rates, which have risen by around half a percentage point for upper primary and upper secondary students from 2016 to 2018 (S. Murudkar, personal communication, July 20, 2021).
Rather than developing a one-time program, Akanksha has created a scalable school model within the government system that drives wider system reform. To this end, it has codified a school development plan focusing first on its core educational values of academic achievement, community engagement, and holistic youth development and well-being. These values are framed as social, emotional, and ethical learning. Each new school in the network begins with a goal-setting process to develop its own ethos in line with these values. Parent engagement, however, serves as a grounding mission across all schools.
Akanksha schools hold themselves accountable for four major community engagement goals: engaging parents as partners in learning, engaging parents as partners in student socio-emotional development, nurturing whole-family well-being, and building family economic resilience. Engagement takes a variety of forms, including representation in School Management Committees (SMCs), parent education programs, in-school partnership opportunities, and individual psychosocial support through dedicated social workers. Parents are invited to regularly participate in their child’s education through events such as quarterly home visits and annual goal-setting meetings that focus on nurturing children who can contribute positively to society. Families actively participate in the SMCs. Engaging parents as partners goes beyond specific programming; it is embedded into the community’s culture.
How does it work?
Given the strong correlation between parent engagement and improved learning outcomes, the Akanksha Foundation attempts to curtail the loss of meaningful relationships between families and their children as their children get older. Akanksha schools hold annual in-school workshops to maintain and rebuild these connections. Workshops take place in a controlled classroom environment, facilitated by a teacher and a social worker. Parents/caregivers and their children are asked to sit facing each other, look into each other’s eyes, hold hands, and have conversations through a series of scripted questions. These questions begin with lighthearted topics, such as favorite foods, and progress to deeper subjects, such as most embarrassing moments or life aspirations. Facilitators note marked changes, as parents/caregivers who were initially embarrassed to look into their child’s eyes or sit close together become much more comfortable doing so by the end of the school year.
What makes it work?
In order to achieve vision alignment within Akanksha schools, parents are guided through an exploration of their personal goals for their children. Often, students are first-generation learners, so their parents tend to first express their aspirations around academic and professional outcomes, such as learning English or getting into university. The Akanksha team probes deeper aspirations in line with its vision of developing value-driven citizens by asking how parents want their students to be as people. Through ongoing conversations, Akanksha has determined that the greatest point of alignment between schools and parents is the desire for children to be people who contribute positively to society. With this reflection, Akanksha unlocks shared goals around cultivating good people. The schools further cement this shared vision, which discounts neither academic achievement nor holistic development, by inviting successful Akanksha alumni, such as those who have started nongovernmental organizations, to share their stories.
A codified but flexible school model enables Akanksha schools to support student achievement, youth development, and community engagement. This model, implemented in all Akanksha schools, includes values such as excellent educators, progressive pedagogy, maximizing resources, parents as partners, and accountability for learning. No one individual leads parent engagement; instead, this value is ingrained in every member of the staff. Engaging parents as partners is a core pillar of all network schools. Adaptable measurements, procedures, and strategies are centrally documented to ensure all schools are striving toward the same core educational vision.
Collaborative goal setting is understood as an ongoing process. Formal events are held throughout the year, including a series of value discussions with new families and annual parent-student goal meetings. But these are enabled by the idea that the school is a family, where teachers are referred to as “big brother” or “big sister” and invite parents to sit and share with students and staff at any time.
The cultural partnership and respect between schools and parents, stemming from family and student needs, allows parents to be actively involved and supportive of their child’s education and development through various hands-on, in-school strategies for parents, directly guided by school staff. Furthermore, the focus on holistic well-being through progressive pedagogy extends not only to students but also to parents and community members. This established focus on 21st-century skills, socio-emotional learning, and social awareness equips parents with the tools they need to productively and confidently engage with the school community and society as a whole.
What is the impact?
As of August 2021, there were 27 Akanksha schools in Mumbai and Pune, reaching over 9,800 students. Akanksha students outperform their state school peers in the class 10 state board examinations. They also have higher levels of completion, with 95% of the 2019-20 cohort passing class 12, as opposed to 91% in the state overall (Akanksha Foundation, n.d.b).
Roles
Staff:
- Teachers and school leaders cofacilitate School Management Committees through monthly meetings alongside parents.
- Social workers teach parents skills ranging from hygiene and nutritional awareness to effective parenting and financial organization, to build their knowledge and to support students’ well-being.
- Teachers invite parents to visit their child’s classrooms to increase their familiarity with the material and communicate with teachers.
Families:
- Parents represent their interests on SMCs to advise the school team on school improvement and take ownership of plan implementation.
- Parents volunteer in their child’s school and in workshops, theater productions, and other activities that address key issues such as women’s empowerment, substance abuse, and physical violence.
- Parents sit in on their child’s classrooms to better understand and contribute to school lesson plans and curricula to support their child’s learning.
- Parents participate in extracurricular activities, including theater productions. For example, parents and staff of one Akanksha school produced and performed “Theatre of the Oppressed,” an interactive play with the goal of raising awareness on the topic of the physical abuse of children.
- Parents reinforce their child’s English language learning at home through bilingual materials and the English parent literacy program.
Resources required
People:
- Approximately nine central office staff
- At least one trained social worker at each Akanksha school
Space:
- Akanksha model schools may be newly built or designed in existing school structures.
Financial:
- Government municipal corporations provide Akanksha with school buildings and student essentials. Nongovernment funders support the Akanksha Foundation by funding the operational costs of the school and programs.
Resources and testimonials
Participant voices from independent CUE-led parent focus group discussions:
- “My younger son Tanishk is in Akanksha. His teachers teach with the help of games, so my younger son attends the classes happily. But for my elder son [who is not in an Akanksha school], his teachers only give lectures and keep on talking one-sided, so he gets bored. Younger son joins classes happily, not the elder one.” – Maharashtra parent 1 (personal communication, December 2020)
- “The teachers of Akanksha Foundation, who think so much about the children, we also like it that these people also think so much about our children.” – Maharashtra parent 2 (personal communication, December 2020)
Voices from the foundation:
- “Instead of referring to their teachers as sir or ma’am, students and parents alike address teachers as ‘didi’ or ‘bhaiya’: big bro or big sis. If a student fails to complete their homework regularly, instead of punishment, the student’s parents will be brought into the school to have a planning meeting with the student and teacher, where they will collaboratively implement a working plan to support the child both at school and at home.” – S. Murudkar, director of Akanksha Foundation schools (personal communication, June 10, 2021)
References
Akanksha Foundation. (n.d.a). About. https://www.akanksha.org/the-school-project/the-model/
Akanksha Foundation. (n.d.b). Our impact. https://www.akanksha.org/our-impact/
Government of Maharashtra School Education and Sports Department. (n.d.). School dashboard. https://education.maharashtra.gov.in/edudashboard/
For more strategies from The Akanksha Foundation, see: