Rama and Padmanabha Rao—RIVER
Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2006 finalist Padmanabha Rao teaching a science lesson to students
Headquartered in Madanpalli, Andhra Pradesh
Year Established: 1987
Area of Activity: Primary Education
Over the last two decades, RIVER has developed and scaled a model of primary education that arrests the multiple barriers faced by marginalized groups in getting quality education for their children.
Led by the husband-wife team of Padmanabha and Rama Rao, RIVER has developed a Multi-Grade, Multi-Level (MGML) methodology that turns the many problems of rural education into advantages. Though RIVER schools follow curriculum laid out by the government, they work without text books. They have one teacher and are designed to integrate children from different grades and different learning abilities in the same room. The curriculum is graded for individual levels of learning, grounded in up to date information and framed in the local idiom. Attendance is above 95% and drop out rates lower by 25% than non-formal education centers in other parts of the country.
The signature innovation of RIVER is the “ladder of learning”—a classroom tool that scales down the learning level for each class into a sequence of concrete and manageable learning units and milestones. Students move through a continuum of milestones within the ladder with the support of color-coded “study cards” and “work cards”. This spurs learner-led classrooms, enables the teacher to invest more in students who need attention and gives parents a pictorial representation of their children”s progress. Children across grades (1-5) and learning abilities use the same materials.
The RIVER MGML model has evolved as an adaptive blueprint and has been trans-created in 40,000 rural and urban primary government schools across India. Close to 25,000 teachers have been trained to design MGML ladders for their schools and 7.5 million children have been directly benefited. The model has been adapted by the government of Ethiopia.
Rama and Padmanabha Rao—both with master's and postgraduate degrees in education—joined Rishi Valley as teachers in 1987. By then they had experience in working with marginalzied communities in the Telengana district to improve education for the underprivileged. In 1987, they joined the Rishi Valley school primarily to lead and develop the Rishi Valley education outreach program, which evolved into RIVER. Since 1988, they have been jointly in charge of the centre.
Rama and Padmanabha share responsibilities in researching and developing curricula, methodology, and teacher training methodologies. While Rama is oriented more toward community development and heads all training initiatives, Padmanabha Rao focuses on fundraising and partnership management. The Rao couple are active members of the National Centre for Education Resource and Training (NCERT)—the key national curriculum platform. They have been involved in various education appraisal and evaluation missions funded by the EU and the GOI.
The Raos have traveled widely both in India and abroad to share their experiences in multigrade teaching and learning. The couple lives at Rishi Valley campus, Madanapally, with their son.
