Rukmini Banerjee wins prestigious Yidan Prize
Educationist Rukmini Banerjee has won the prestigious Yidan Prize for 2021, a global education award which recognises change-makers who inspire progress in education for a better world.
Dr Rukmini Banerjee recently became the first India-based winner of the Yidan Prize, the world’s highest education accolade.
She won the 2021 edition of the Yidan Prize for Education Development. Her co-winner is Professor Eric A Hanushek, who won the Yidan Prize for Education Research.
Both have been recognised for “groundbreaking work addressing a crucial piece of the education puzzle: improving quality of education and outcomes for learners at scale”, according to the Yidan Prize webpage dedicated to their achievements.
Specifically, Dr Banerjee’s work deals with measuring children’s learning levels on a mass scale, which she and her team at Pratham Education Foundation (she is the chief executive officer) do by bringing out the pioneering ASER report (Annual Status of Education Report) every year.
ASER is an annual survey that aims to provide reliable annual estimates of children’s schooling status and basic learning levels for each state and rural district in India.
According to the award authorities, the ASER reports have revealed literacy and numeracy gaps among children in India who had already spent several years at school. To close these gaps, the team’s ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ (TaRL) programme “works with schools and local communities to provide basic reading and arithmetic skills, ensuring no children are left behind”.
The webpage further explains that this “systematic, replicable model reaches millions of children annually across the country and is spreading around the globe”.
According to ASER’s website, the “ASER model has been adapted for use in several countries around the world: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Pakistan, Mali, Senegal and Mexico”.
Originally from Bihar, Dr Banerjee is now based between New Delhi and Pune. Rukmini Banerjee writes frequently on education in both Hindi and English dailies in India and enjoys writing books and stories for children.
