FIELD

ATTACHMENT’23

CENTRAL SQUARE FOUNDATION

DEVANSH CHOUDHARY
M2023ed004
Name of the student : Devansh Choudhary

Organization/Institution for FA : Central Square Foundation

Name of Field Mentor : Mr. Faizal Siddique

Area of work the organization/institution is involved in and for how much time :
• The non-profit Central Square Foundation's mission is to guarantee that every child
in India receives a top-notch education. The organization's goal is to ensure that
every kid has equitable access to learning opportunities by implementing effective,
scalable, and sustainable changes in the Indian school system. Here at CSF, we
seek to raise the standard of education for children in India's schools, which cater to
students from 3 to 18 years old, with an emphasis on primary school students.CSF
has prioritized the following critical areas of work:
• Foundational Literacy & Numeracy (FLN)
• EdTech
• Early Childhood Education (ECE)
• Schools Governance

Major impact, achievement or contribution to the field that the

organization/institution has been able to achieve :
• CSF has improved student learning outcomes in India by implementing system-led
reform. They have assisted governments and ecosystem stakeholders in developing
the capacity to enhance the learning environment for every kid in an effort to address
the national and state levels of the educational crisis. In order to identify issues and
develop solutions for the entire education system, CSF has collaborated with
ecosystem organizations and effectively supported governments with technical,
academic, and project management assistance. CSF collaborates closely on
important topics and the execution of policies with State and Federal government
bodies.Let us quickly look into the major achievements of the organization in their
critical areas of work :
 1. FLN
• CSF has been long working to build salience for FLN and position it as
a priority in the media and with Central institutions like the Ministry of
Education, NITI Aayog, CBSE, and NCERT.
• CSF works with 11 states to design and operationalize state-wide FLN
missions by providing long term academic and project management
support.
• CSF develops exemplar tools and classroom resources for FLN based
on proven approaches such as structured pedagogy and assessment
informed instruction.
• Better learning has been facilitated by the governance interventions
that CSF has successfully conceptualized, tested, and evaluated. The
latest projects of CSF are aimed at enhancing the accuracy of learning
and administrative data.
2. EdTech
• CSF Supported the creation and adoption of high quality, contextual
learning solutions for low income communities.
• Worked towards gathering and generating evidence on the role of
technology in education and also supported governments in adopting
effective and relevant software solutions
• Creating public goods to support the EdTech ecosystem.

• Few examples of Developing Contextual and High-Quality Solutions

includes:
• Rocket Learning which uses a custom built digital
communication platform to send out learning materials to
parents and teachers on WhatsApp groups through automated
technology.
• Tic TacLearn which is a library with over 10,000 high-quality,
animated, free, and curriculum-based videos available in 5
vernacular languages.
3. Early Childhood Education
• CSF conducted research on and evaluated various models of public
provisioning of ECE, aimed at increasing effective learning time in
 Anganwadis and pre- primary sections in government schools. Build
salience at national and state levels on evidence-based approaches to
ensure quality ECE.
• CSF also provides advisory and techno-managerial support to state
governments to pilot and scale innovative solutions to universalize
quality ECE.
4. School Governance
• By providing parents with information on school quality derived from standardized
assessments in elementary and middle school, CSF has attempted to close the
information gap that exists between parents and schools.
• In an effort to foster an environment that allows private schools to concentrate more
on enhancing learning outcomes, CSF has worked to create a positive narrative by
sharing data and evidence.

Nature of work or role that the students are involved in at the institution/ organization
:
CSF has been participating in a branding exercise run by the HR department. We have
planned interviews with a range of organization personnel from every department. The
results of these interviews will be further processed into testimonies, which will then be
posted on their website.
We would probably be collaborating on their projects with the CSF Assessments team as
well. The goal of the initiative is to write kid-friendly playbooks that are both entertaining and
educational.Our primary responsibility would be to transform chapters of text into video
lessons. We would also need to sort and analyze data in order to further create dashboards
for kids.

Time period of engagement at the institution/ organization:

The time duration for our FA as planned by the organization is of 10 days (minimum of 6 hrs
each) but would most likely be extended to another 10 days or so if we are given the
opportunity to work under the Assessments team of the organization.

What does the student hope to understand with regard to the work of the
organization/ institution and education/development? :
These are the following expected learnings from the FA about the organization :
• The dynamic understanding of the term ‘field’. To realize how a field can be
constituted at different settings and levels.
• To understand the working of big organizations like CSF and how they affect the
policy formulation as well as implementation of public policies and other orders of the
government respected to education.
• To understand how not just ground level work but also big corporate like
organizations can play an integral role in ensuring good quality education in India.
• To understand the significance of different stakeholders present in the process of
policy formulation in the field of education.
• To get a deeper insight into new concepts like Edtech, FLN, ECE, School
Governance etc.