Dr Rukmini Banerji, Chief Executive Officer, Pratham Education Foundation, was delivering the Foundation Day lecture at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore on Monday, October 28. The topic was Opportunities & Challenges for Education in Today’s India, informed a press release from the institute.

Here are highlights from the speech of Ms Banerji, who was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University:

- "A deep focus on primary and pre-primary education has become a key focus area for India, and a lot depends on how much each one of us, as citizens of the country, can contribute to help children catch up and progress in terms of education".

- " What is needed now is more value addition to accelerate the children’s academic progress, in terms of ability of reading and knowledge of numbers."

- “To address some of the challenges, the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach was adopted, leading to better outcomes in learning.”

- “The NEP recognises the importance of early childhood education, and aims for a strong foundation of children’s development and learning. The policy clearly outlines the foundational literacy-numeracy goals for the country."

- “The highest priority of the education system will be to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools by 2025. What we do in the next five years will decide India’s destiny for the rest of the century.”