Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL)by PRATHAM

From Research to Action
Pratham’s TaRL approach has scaled throughout India and Africa to reach over 60 million students.

While several other delivery models had been tried in the past, starting in 2012, Pratham began to focus on two implementation models:

Learning camp model: Pratham instructors work directly with children in “Learning Camps.” Learning Camps are intensive periods of instructional activity that usually last ten days. Children (generally in grades 3 to 5) are re-grouped according to learning level rather than age or grade for two to three hours per day. Three to five camps are done throughout the year for a total of 30 to 50 instructional days, often with a gap of roughly ten days between each camp. When they are not in a Learning Camp, children return to their regular grade classes. Learning Camps are carried out during the school day with the permission of local authorities.
Government partnership model: Government teachers are trained and supported to implement TaRL in their schools. In these models, teachers re-group children in grades 3 to 5 based on learning level for one or two hours per day to focus on basic skills. Usually the program is led by mentors or “leaders of practice” who are part of the government system but have carried out “practice classes” to implement and experience the TaRL approach first-hand. The leaders of practice then train teachers and also provide ongoing, onsite support. Drawing on learning from randomized evaluations in Haryana and Bihar, Pratham helps ensure that teachers receive strong ongoing mentorship support and that monitoring and review systems are integrated into existing educational systems.
Pratham’s efforts to implement these two models at scale, strategically support governments aiming to improve learning, and continuously incorporate learnings from rigorous research have led to the implementation of TaRL programs in many states in India.

Drawing on the success of the TaRL approach in India, governments and non-governmental organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa are adapting and implementing TaRL programs in several countries with technical support from Pratham, J-PAL, and other partners. Since piloting the TaRL approach in 2016, for instance, the Ministry of General Education (MoGE) in Zambia has expanded its Catch Up program to 1,900 schools in three provinces. After the program was first piloted in Nigerian schools in late 2019, TaRL Africa pivoted to supporting home-based learning when the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in school closures from April 2020 to January 2021. Since schools reopened, TaRL has been scaled to more than 800 schools across five states. In Côte d’Ivoire, TaRL Africa is supporting the Ministry of National Education and Literacy (MENA) to deliver and grow the Program d’Enseignement Ciblé (Program of Targeted Instruction, PEC). Other organizations are working to support governments to scale TaRL-inspired programs in countries across the African continent, including in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

In 2021, TaRL programming reached over one million children in 12 African countries, and TaRL Africa, which began as a joint venture between J-PAL and Pratham, registered as a Kenyan organization. For more information on TaRL in Sub-Saharan Africa, please visit the TaRL Africa website.

Recent years have seen growing awareness of a global learning crisis–reflected in the transition from the Millennium Development Goals, which focused on school enrollment, to the Sustainable Development Goals, which recognize that this increase in enrollment has not translated into an increase in learning. 4 TaRL, along with the broader body of work it helped to catalyze on targeted instruction, has gained global recognition as an effective strategy to improve learning. As policymakers search for solutions, a number of education interventions–including customized learning technology in India, preschool pedagogy in Peru, low-tech interventions targeted at parents during Covid-19 school closures in Botswana, and tutoring programs in the United States–cite the Importance of assessing learning levels and targeting instruction to learners.

A number of influential organizations now recognize TaRL as an effective approach to teach foundational skills and address learning loss. Citing TaRL evidence, an independent panel convened by the World Bank, FCDO, and the donor group Building Evidence in Education identified targeted instruction as an intervention for which there is good evidence of cost-effectiveness. The FLN (Foundational Literacy and Numeracy) Hub– a resource hub with guidance on improving children’s foundational literacy and numeracy skills, developed by J-PAL, Unicef, Pratham, and Delivery Associates in collaboration with the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education– has a standalone section on TaRL. Unicef, drawing on its experience supporting Zambia to implement TaRL, id