Peepul

Peepul is an education nonprofit that works with state governments to improve the quality of teaching and school leadership in government schools across India. Its focus is on creating high-engagement classrooms, building teacher capacity, and strengthening school administration and governance systems. Peepul is the registered trademark of Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), a society registered in India.

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The organisation currently works across 2 geographies, primarily Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, reaching over 300,000 students, 90,000 teachers, and 5,000 mentors, school leaders, and academic officials.

Headquarters: New Delhi (with offices in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh) Sectors: Education, Teacher Development, School Leadership, Government Systems

Peepul uses a "school to scale" model. It first runs Exemplar Schools as research and development labs, testing pedagogy and practices. Evidence from these schools is then used to design at-scale programmes for state governments. Lessons from state rollouts are refined and shared nationally. The three levers in Peepul's approach are need-specific teacher training, rigorous academic mentoring, and building sustainable administrative policies and processes within government systems.

Programmes

• Exemplar Schools Peepul directly runs a small number of government schools to test and develop effective classroom and school management practices. These serve as proof points for what is possible in the public school system.

• Delhi Scale Programme

A large-scale teacher professional development and school support programme in partnership with the Delhi government, aimed at improving classroom engagement and learning outcomes across Delhi's government schools.

• CM RISE Teacher Professional Development (Madhya Pradesh)

Peepul supports the Madhya Pradesh government's CM RISE school initiative by training teachers across the state in classroom practices and subject knowledge.

• Sandipani Vidyalaya

A programme running government schools in Madhya Pradesh with a focus on high-quality teaching and engaged learning environments.

• Digital Literacy (Delhi and Madhya Pradesh)

Peepul runs digital literacy programmes in both states, building basic technology skills for students in government schools.

• LiftEd

A programme focused on improving foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes for students in the early grades.

• PM SHRI Schools

Peepul supports the central government's PM SHRI school development programme, helping selected government schools become model institutions within their clusters.

• Fellowship

Peepul runs a fellowship for professionals who want to work in education reform and school transformation. Peepul is a good fit for people with backgrounds in teaching, school leadership, teacher training, education policy, or programme management who want to work on improving government school quality at scale in India.