A solid early education is the cornerstone of a child's future. It shapes their physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development while setting them on the path to success in both their academic journey and overall life experiences. However, many young children have limited access to high-quality educational opportunities due to socioeconomic factors and technological barriers. Endless network, a global organization committed to addressing equity disparities stemming from issues such as inadequate Internet access, strategically invests in companies around the world that align with its mission and actively contribute to its realization. This article highlights the initiatives of one of those companies, rocket learning.
Recently, EdSurge spoke with the co-founders of Rocket Learning Namya Mahajan and Siddhant Sachdeva about their dedication to providing high-quality early childhood education (ECE) opportunities to India's underprivileged populations. Sachdeva's interest in early education was influenced by her mother, who runs a preschool in her home, allowing her to observe the learning processes of young children in the area. Sachdeva went from consulting with the Boston Consultation Group to develop solutions for early childhood education. It aspired to make high-quality education financially viable and scalable for the broader system.
Mahajan, who was part of the national leadership in the Association of Self-Employed Workers, noted that her interest in early childhood education arose from the perspective of motherhood, through which she recognized the importance of quality child care for women's participation in the workforce and economic empowerment. She became passionate about this topic after delving into research on child development and realizing the lack of investment and services in this area. Mahajan shares, “Rocket Learning's mission is to make quality education and learning accessible to all children from the earliest stage possible. “All children deserve equal opportunities regardless of their background.”
EdSurge: Is the lack of ECE opportunities unique to a particular demographic or is it a global problem?
Mahajan: This is absolutely a global problem. There are 350 million children under six years of age around the world who are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential simply because of where they were born. Because of the way current education systems are structured and how governments, philanthropies, and others choose to invest their resources, these children will not have access to the quality early learning they deserve. This sends them to school unprepared to learn and has fundamental (negative) effects later in life that are difficult and costly to reverse. Sometimes we feel like the education ecosystem invests so much in remedial education or learning later in life, where actually, if we fixed the problem early, we could prevent a lot of these problems. The problem is worse in rural communities of low socioeconomic status, but all households can underinvest in the early years.
India has 35 million children under six years of age who need early learning support. Rocket Learning provides a two-pronged approach. Firstly, we support the community worker working in one of India's 1.4 million childcare centers to develop the tools and knowledge necessary to become a qualified early childhood educator. We send them bite-sized pieces of content that they can use in their classroom every day. We take them on this professional development journey over the course of a year or two.
Secondly, we work with parents. We recognize that parents have this powerful incentive for their children to do well in school and can be very effective in teaching because children learn best when they are with someone they trust and love. We share similar small activities with parents and invite them to share with their communities.
Programmatically we reach about 1.5 million children, but that is not enough. The hope is that by partnering with the government, we can bring the latest learning science, the best content, and the best technology to all early childhood development workers and parents. We have an ambitious goal in the next five years: we hope to have an impact on more than 30 million children under six years of age.
What are the main challenges you have encountered in implementing your programs and how have you overcome them?
Sachdev: Any educational technology initiative poses barriers to access and digital literacy. So, we need to consider that when we develop our program. We also found other behavioral barriers. For example, there may be a caregiver who is not very confident in themselves as an educator and therefore is not as committed to the product or mission. Teaching a growth mindset is a critical part of how we approach caregiver and teacher development. We have also created tools that help us decode and diagnose where caregivers are in their own learning journey, from creating aspirations to confidence and the right set of behaviors. There may be parents who have the right aspiration but do not have the right level of confidence to participate in these programs, and there may be parents who lack the aspiration itself. We have these specific campaigns that target caregivers wherever they are in the learning process.
How does your organization actively incorporate diverse voices into your work and decision-making processes?
Mahajan: Diversity and inclusion are very important in our work because we want to build an organization that reflects to the (greatest) extent possible the populations we serve. Many of our leaders come from the communities we serve. We also try to ensure that we are 50% women, including in leadership positions. We try to preferably hire candidates from diverse backgrounds, be it caste, religion or people with disabilities.
Additionally, we've recently undergone a major overhaul of the way we create and measure our content. We ensure that content features children from visibly different communities, backgrounds and abilities. We show caregivers who are both male and female to encourage fathers and other male caregivers to participate in the home.
What role does technology play in your efforts to provide early learning opportunities and how do you ensure equitable access to technological resources?
Mahajan: We see technology as a tool, not the only solution. The solution must be high-quality, science-backed early learning content that reaches children every day and helps develop their skills and habits. However, it is challenging to achieve this at scale without technology. India's population, including vulnerable households, has a high smartphone penetration rate – 75% of households have access to them. We design our content to be simple and smartphone-friendly, catering to digital-first users with human-centric design. We also consider factors such as available memory, data packages, screen orientation, and the specific needs of the communities we serve. Our goal is to use technology in the most user-friendly and inclusive way possible, reaching parents with smartphones and children in classrooms.
Sachdev: We also use technology to perform many tests similar to those of large technology companies. These tests aim to discover what works and what doesn't when it comes to ensuring the incorporation, activation and participation of low-income households and daycare workers in early childhood education. The idea behind this is that we share with the ecosystem what really works and what doesn't work with low-income communities. There are great organizations attempting similar ambitious goals around the world, and we want them to be able to learn from what Rocket Learning is doing. Therefore, our goal is not only to create open source content for others to use, but also an open source model that others can learn from.
What is a memorable story that highlights the impact of your work on early childhood development?
Mahajan: We had this young mother with a 3-year-old join our program. In fact, mom learned how to use a smartphone just for our program; She insisted that her daughter learn. Her daughter was one of the quietest children; she was too shy to speak. Her language development was not competent enough to speak with children her age.
Now that the girl is five years old and has been in the program for a while, she won't stop talking! She has learned to count and can begin to distinguish words in a book. She and her parents look for the homework activity daily, do it together and share it with us. It has been beautiful to be a part of this family's journey over the past two years.
Sachdev: We also work extensively with daycare workers. There is a 50 year old woman who has been doing this caregiving job for the last 25 years or more. She earned a certificate for her continued participation in the program and is much more confident in her daily performance in early childhood education. Her community is giving her the credit she deserves and it's great to be a part of her journey. We have been able to not only develop improved technical expertise for daycare workers, but also make them more confident and proud of their efforts.
