Assam State Initiative

The Tata Trusts launched the Assam State Initiative (ASI) - Education in 2019 to address the most pressing challenges prevalent in Assam’s elementary education system, such as a high rate of student dropouts, the absence of a remedial support system in government schools, and a concerning lack of community awareness regarding the importance of elementary education.

Hence, the ASI-Education programme was launched with the following objectives in mind:

• Organising motivational camps for out-of-school children to facilitate their successful integration into schools
• Offering remedial support to children who are weak in studies and likely to drop out from schools, helping them develop a foundational understanding in their academic subjects
• Empowering School Management Committees (SMCs) to function effectively

During the first year of the programme, ASI-Education collaborated with three local NGOs for implementation. However, from the second year onwards, the Centre for Microfinance and Livelihood (CLM), an associate organisation of the Trusts, came on board as an implementation partner. CML was set up in 2008 to spearhead capacity building, collaborative interventions, and policy advocacy in Northeast India. During its first phase, which ended in March 2023, ASI-Education was actively implemented in 90 schools across 121 villages, covering four districts in lower Assam — Baksa, Bongaigaon, Goalpara, and Nalbari. The second phase of the programme is currently awaiting approval and is expected to launch in October 2023 with a planned outreach of 450 primary schools and 39,000 student beneficiaries.

Since its inception, the initiative has successfully organised 38 motivational camps, reaching out to 1,237 out-of-school children who were subsequently enrolled in government schools and provided with remedial support to bridge their learning gap, especially in foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Remedial support was also offered to other students in school who were weak in studies. A total of 5,850 have benefitted from the remedial support offered by ASI-Education, enabling them to keep pace with their peers.

In addition to student support, ASI-Education focused on capacity building for teachers and SMC members to further strengthen the education system of Assam. To date, more than 200 teachers and 2,600 SMC members have benefitted from the training programme.