Q1. How can philanthropic commitment drive sustained interventions for foundational learning in India, ensuring a balance between long-term impact and measurable outcomes?

Philanthropy in education must be catalytic, not substitutive — given that total philanthropic spending is under 3% of the government’s ₹6,75,000 crore education budget. Instead of creating parallel systems, philanthropic capital should enhance the effectiveness of public spending on foundational learning.

A key area for investment is quality improvement. Philanthropy can support rigorous measurement systems to generate data-driven insights, enabling better decision-making. It can fund pilots that test innovative models, which, if successful, can be scaled by the government. Additionally, philanthropic funding can provide crucial technical and project management support to government programs, ensuring efficient implementation and stronger learning outcomes.

By aligning with government priorities and focusing on systemic improvements, philanthropy can drive sustained impact — ensuring that investments translate into long-term gains for foundational learning in India.

Q2. How can Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) support states in making FLN reforms sustainable beyond the initial phase of NIPUN Bharat?

Civil society organisations play a critical role in ensuring the sustainability of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) reforms beyond the initial phase of NIPUN Bharat by providing technical and project management support to state governments.

A key contribution is setting up Program Management Units (PMUs), like  (CSF) presence in 11 states, to drive implementation, track progress and troubleshoot challenges. CSOs can also act as academic partners, supporting State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs) in designing high-quality teaching and learning materials aligned with state needs. Additionally, CSOs can provide intensive, high-touch support in select ‘demo districts’, creating proof points that states can scale up with their own resources.

Beyond direct programme support, CSOs should focus on strengthening state capacity — training government officials, institutionalising data-driven decision-making and embedding robust monitoring mechanisms. By transferring knowledge and best practices, CSOs can help states build self-sustaining systems for continuous FLN improvement, ensuring long-term impact.

Q3. Reflecting on CSF’s experience with key educational initiatives like Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA) and Structured Assessment For Analyzing Learning (SAFAL), what have been some of the key learnings from these projects?

While DIKSHA is a national digital learning platform providing teachers and students with curriculum-aligned resources, widely adopted across states, SAFAL is a competency-based assessment for students in grades 3, 5, and 8 that helps schools improve teaching and learning. 

From our experience with DIKSHA and SAFAL, CSF has gained several key insights into driving large-scale education reforms effectively:

1. Strong Government Ownership is Critical: DIKSHA’s success was driven by deep integration with government systems, such as embedding QR codes in textbooks. Aligning with state and national priorities ensures long-term adoption and sustainability.
   
2. User-Centric Design Enhances Adoption: DIKSHA’s reach expanded significantly when content was tailored for both teachers and students. Ensuring ease of access, multilingual support and alignment with classroom needs is essential for scaling digital interventions.
   
3. Robust Project Management Accelerates Implementation: As a PMU partner, CSF helped streamline DIKSHA’s rollout across states by providing structured execution frameworks, resolving bottlenecks and ensuring timely content deployment.
   
4. Early Capacity Building Strengthens Reform Longevity: SAFAL’s implementation highlighted the importance of training education officials and teachers on assessment literacy. Investing in capacity development ensures states can independently sustain reforms beyond initial phases.
   
5. Demonstration and Data-Driven Decision Making Drive Scale: SAFAL’s design as a competency-based assessment model gained credibility by showing clear learning insights. Piloting in select regions before full-scale implementation enabled better refinement and buy-in.

By embedding these learnings, CSF has demonstrated how technical and project management support can strengthen systemic education reforms, ensuring they are scalable, sustainable and impactful.

Q4. How critical are partnerships in driving progress for quality education in India? How can these collaborations help address systemic challenges and scale impactful solutions in the sector?

Partnerships are essential for driving progress in quality education in India, as they bring together the strengths of government, civil society, philanthropy and the private sector to address systemic challenges and scale impactful solutions.

Collaboration with the government ensures that reforms align with national priorities and leverage public funding for sustainability. Civil society organisations provide technical expertise, programme management support and evidence-based solutions. Philanthropic partners offer flexible funding to test innovations, pilot scalable models and fill critical gaps in research and capacity building. The private sector contributes technology, data analytics and operational efficiencies to improve learning outcomes.

Such multi-stakeholder partnerships help tackle systemic challenges by enabling better governance, enhancing teacher training, improving student assessments and strengthening accountability mechanisms. They also allow for rapid experimentation in controlled settings, creating proof points that states can scale using their own resources.

Additionally, another new layer of partnerships is different CSOs leveraging each other’s strengths instead of reinventing the wheel. This will help complement each other and compensate for gaps.

Ultimately, partnerships create a multiplier effect — ensuring that quality education reforms are not just well-designed but also well-implemented, sustainable and impactful at scale.

Q5. Where do you see foundational learning in the context of India’s national priorities? What strategies should be employed to ensure it remains a key focus for long-term policy and investment?

Foundational learning is at the heart of India’s national priorities, directly impacting the country’s economic growth, social mobility and the vision of Viksit Bharat. With ASER 2024 results indicating progress, this is a critical moment to build on the momentum and ensure sustained policy focus and investment in FLN.

Extending the NIPUN Bharat Mission to at least 2032 could reinforce foundational learning as a sustained national priority, ensuring long-term impact. Strengthening state capacity through targeted technical support, data-driven decision-making and robust teacher training will be essential. Additionally tracking FLN performance monitoring indicators and setting institutional accountability will be key for success.

Philanthropy and civil society must play a catalytic role, supporting measurement, innovation and large-scale implementation. The private sector can contribute by developing scalable ed-tech solutions and enabling more efficient content delivery.

India has a historic opportunity to solve the FLN challenge once and for all. By making foundational learning a sustained national priority, the country can lay the groundwork for a skilled, productive and globally competitive workforce.

About Saurabh Chopra

Saurabh leads the Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives team at CSF. His work involves working closely with various central government stakeholders and executing numerous national-scale education projects. He has led multiple CSF engagements on the National Education Policy, NIPUN Bharat Mission, National Achievement Survey, DIKSHA, CBSE SAFAL, TicTacLearn, etc. Prior to joining CSF, Saurabh built EnglishLeap, an online English learning application, which catered to more than two million users. He also has experience in data analytics and has worked across continents with Fortune 500 clients.