Leadership for Equity

Leadership for Equity is an advisory and implementation organisation that works with governments to give every child in public schools a future-ready education. It is registered as a Section 8 non-profit company under the legal name Leadership For Skilled Education Foundation. Its main focus is the people who run the public education system: government officers, teacher educators and teachers. It says the biggest gap in public education is in delivering and implementing reforms, and it works on that gap by building the skills of the people responsible for them. All of its programmes are co-implemented with state departments, SCERTs, district bodies and municipal corporations.

Headquarters: Pune, Maharashtra, India

Major Areas of Work

• Strengthening Teacher Education: Preparing government teachers through competency-based training, lesson plans and teaching-learning materials.

• Enabling System Leadership: Training government education officers in programme design, policy implementation, and academic coaching and monitoring.

• Enhancing Educational Governance: Supporting government institutions with policy advice, programme management and regular reviews based on data.

• Foundational Literacy and Numeracy: Working with state and district systems to improve early-grade reading and maths in primary schools.

• Research, Content and Evaluation: Creating content, publishing research and evaluating learning growth together with government partners.

Major Initiatives and Programmes

• FLN Reform Project, Maharashtra: A foundational literacy and numeracy programme in Maharashtra's government primary schools, with student outcomes measured by a third-party assessment.

• Sahyogi Dal Project: A peer support model for rural and municipal teachers, including teachers in Pune Municipal Corporation schools, built around teacher collaboration.

• Nashik District Transformation Project: A district-wide programme with Nashik Zilla Parishad to improve rural public education.

• Supporting Andhra's Learning Transformation: A partnership with the Government of Andhra Pradesh to help teachers improve foundational learning.

• CISCO Leadership Enhancement and Academic Development: A programme that builds the academic leadership skills of government system leaders and education officers.

• SCERT and DIET Strengthening, Tripura: Support for the State Council of Educational Research and Training and the District Institutes of Education and Training across Tripura.

The organisation also runs tribal education work with Maharashtra's Tribal Development Department and Tribal Research and Training Institute, digital learning work with SCERT Haryana, and teacher quality work with the Government of Nagaland.

Impact

Leadership for Equity states that it works in 5 states and 12 districts and cities. It reports reaching more than 10,500 academic leaders, over 2.2 lakh teachers and more than 8.8 million students. Its homepage gives a rounder figure of close to 10 million children. It reports an average learning growth of 13.86% among officers and 16% among teachers. It also cites a third-party assessment of its Maharashtra FLN project, which found that Grade 5 students improved by 10% in literacy and 24% in numeracy.

Partners

• Government: Governments of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura; SCERTs of Maharashtra, Haryana, Nagaland and Tripura; Samagra Shiksha; DIKSHA; MIEPA; Tribal Development Department, Maharashtra; Tribal Research and Training Institute, Pune; Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Nagpur Municipal Corporations; Pune, Nashik, Ahmednagar, Nagpur, Akola, Chandrapur and Sindhudurg Zilla Parishads.

• Institutions and non-profits: Mantra4Change, TISS Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education, Quest Alliance, Centre for Learning Resources, Code to Enhance Learning, Brookings Center for Universal Education, Akanksha Foundation, Panaah Communities.

• CSR and philanthropy: Central Square Foundation, World Bank, Amazon India, Bajaj Finserv, Bosch, Forbes Marshall, DSP, Koita Foundation, Anu Aga and Pudumjee Family Philanthropy, Harish and Bina Shah Foundation, Motivation For Excellence, The Nudge.

People who join Leadership for Equity work directly inside the government school system. They sit alongside SCERTs, district offices and municipal education departments to design and run programmes that reach very large numbers of teachers and students. The work combines training design, coaching of officers, content creation, data-based reviews and evaluation, so it builds skills in both programme delivery and education policy. It suits people who want to work on public education at the level of whole systems, are comfortable working with government officials, and are based in or willing to travel across Maharashtra and the other states where it works.