Educate 32000 underserved children in India

ABOUT TEACH FOR INDIA

India has long been plagued by seemingly insurmountable learning deficits, a reality that has only been exacerbated by the impact of COVID-19. 47% of Indian 14-year-olds cannot read English sentences and 57% cannot solve simple division. 76% of students in India do not make it to grade 10, while less than 5% of India’s low-income youth are enrolled in college.

As an organization, Teach For India holds a critical role in the country’s educational reform efforts. Over our decade-long work with students from underprivileged communities, we have learned that sustainability and scale in social change can be realized only by a collective commitment of leaders committed to educational equity. A collective of highly skilled teachers, excellent school principals, and visionary bureaucrats, working together with politicians, civil society, and committed corporate leaders must hold the keys to dramatically raising student outcomes.

Our team, led by Shaheen Mistri, our Founder and CEO, who has spent 30 years focused only on unleashing potential in India’s children, is 250 strong. Our Board of Directors span the corporate, legal and education world and are firmly committed to our mission. Teach For India is the third largest partner after Teach For America and Teach First in the Teach For All network, a growing group of 59 independent organizations that are working to expand educational opportunity in their nations.

TEACH FOR INDIA FELLOWSHIP
The Teach For India Fellowship program is an opportunity for India’s brightest and most promising individuals, from the nation’s best universities and workplaces, to serve as full-time teachers to children from low-income communities in some of the nation’s most under-resourced schools for a period of two years. The journey begins with an intensive 5-8 week training (Summer Institute) that equips them with the skills, knowledge and mindsets to impact the lives of 35 or more students in low-income schools. Fellows work in and beyond the classroom, where they relentlessly focus on moving their students towards path-changing learning. Through this experience of teaching in classrooms and working with key education stakeholders like students, principals, and parents, our Fellows get exposed to the grassroots realities of India’s education system and begin to cultivate the knowledge, skills, and mindsets necessary to attain positions of leadership in the education system and begin to identify their role in building a larger movement for equity in education. 

BUILDING ON A DECADE OF IMPACT

Since 2009, we have had about 125,000 individuals apply to the Fellowship. Each year, we receive more than 15,000 applications for the Fellowship. The Teach For India Fellowship has an acceptance rate of 6-8%. 

1,000+  Fellows currently working across 8 Cities

34,000 Students learning in TFI Classrooms 

10,000 Students graduated from grade 10 since TFI’s inception 

>90% TFI Students successfully graduating high school year on year

The Teach For India Fellowship places one in a challenging environment. The experience has also proven transformational for those who choose to endure the journey.  

94% believe that their journey at Teach For India has been a good investment in their personal and professional development.

94% say that they find purpose and meaning in the work that they do in the Fellowship.

95% Fellows share to be proud to be a part of Teach For India.

A majority of our Fellows choosing to remain a part of the education sector post completion of their Fellowship stands testament to the fact that our model works and benefits the larger ecosystem as well. 

4000+ Fellows have successfully completed the two-year Fellowship and are now Teach For India Alumni.

71% Alumni work across the education and social sector 

130+ Organisations have been founded by our Alumni with over a 100 of them in CXO and senior leadership positions.

Our stakeholder ecosystem involves the catalyzing effect of a key member, the school principal. Over the years, we have garnered the support of  School Principals and they love and support our work. 

96% School principals believe that Teach For India Fellows will have a lifetime impact on Students.

92% Believe that Teach For India classrooms in their school are high-performing, demonstrating impact in academic and holistic outcomes.

OUR NEXT DECADE 

We are committed to relentlessly work towards building a movement of leaders who work together to ensure children from low-income backgrounds attain an excellent, equitable education. 

At Teach For India, we firmly believe that no one living in the 21st century in our country should be hungry, unemployed or unable to access health care or education. Our work is also strongly anchored in the value of love. We understand that the ideals enshrined in our Constitution – liberty, justice, equality and fraternity – will only be the privilege of all Indians when we learn to treat others the way we wish to be treated – with love. To us, love is all-encompassing. If we learn to love ourselves, each other, our work, our country, our world then we will do whatever it takes to care for and improve things around us for all of us. Keeping this mindset at the centre, we are looking at our way forward with strategic priorities. 

We are now at the beginning our our next decade of work, our Phase 4. In this decade of our work, we will work towards building 50,000 leaders working collectively, with love to transform the lives of 1 in 10 children from low-income backgrounds in our regions through an education that unleashes the potential of self, others, and India. We have identified the main pillars that will catylyse our work in the next decade of our journey. We are motivated to strengthen and scale our programs. In addition to this, we are ensuring we match our Alumni to key levers in the education sector. As always, we will continue to advocate strongly for student agency, voice and leadership. In all this, we strive to act collectively with our communities, policy makers and the country at large.

ALUMNI STORY

I joined the Teach For India Fellowship with the belief that it is the right experience for me to work in the Education sector. As a grandson of a farmer, I saw firsthand the transformational power of education. My father managed to secure a job in a tier 1 city, and that changed my destiny and the generations to come. That is the power of education, it doesn't just change one life; it changes generations. This is the impact I wanted to create by joining the Fellowship. 

I taught in a low-income private school in Pune. Through those 2 years, I taught Math, Science, and Social Studies to grade 7 and 8 students. My students shaped my experiences about the lived realities of the vast majority of people in our country, the reality that where you are born decides where you will go. 

The four walls of our classroom became a place to challenge that reality, to create a life of choice. 

As I progressed through my Fellowship, taking up opportunities to work with children and adults, I built my depth in the education landscape. Making connections to my own reality of the village that my family is from, my conviction in the work that I do in education grew. 

Towards the end of my Fellowship, I firmly believed in the power of people to create collective change and wanted to explore what it would mean to bring that alive through coaching and training. Hence, I went on to join the staff team at Teach For India Pune as a Program Manager, where I coached and mentored Fellows from the cohort of 2019, 2020, and 2021. I was a Program Manager for 2 years, and during my tenure, I explored what excellence in education means and what does it take for a collective to bring that alive for our children. As I kept visiting schools and classrooms, there was a gnawing feeling in me, a reality that I had to confront. The reality that our children will never achieve excellent education because our schools are not designed for an excellent education. 

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” 

- James Clear, Atomic Habits

Our systems in schools were meant for obedience, not ownership. 

Thus, I explored what it means to run high-impact schools, which led me to believe that, along with people, the systems in which they work need to evolve to bring the best outcomes for all children. 

That is the reality I am shaping. Redesigning our traditional approach to school to empower our children to lead a life of choice and empower others and our country. Towards that end, I am working with an organization, and we're starting our first K-10 Public Private Partnership school in Pune. Our school approach is to redesign how we perceive education, its outcomes, and its process to make it a model that can be replicated in all school types.

In this journey, we've been empowered by the collective force of this movement. The force that is our alumni in strengthening our vision, funders and partners have shown interest in enabling us to make this vision a reality, and Teach For India that has taken a stand with us to redesign schools. 

With the collective, we march towards a country where our children don’t survive school, but thrive in them.

- Prince 
Fellow Cohort of 2018

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