Learning centres
Eleven rooms, open at six
The programme everything else exists to protect
- Reach
- 2,412 children this year
- Where
- Eleven centres across Hadapsar, Ramtekdi, Kharadi and Wagholi
- Who
- Children in Classes 1 to 10 at municipal and aided schools, referred by their own teachers
A learning centre is two rented rooms and a toilet, on a lane a child can reach without crossing a highway. There is a fan, a light that works when the power does, a steel cupboard of workbooks, and a teacher who has been there long enough that the parents call her by name rather than by title.
That is the whole model. It is not innovative and we have stopped pretending it is. What it has is fourteen years in the same four neighbourhoods, which turns out to be the variable that matters.
Why not just fund the school?
We would, if that were on offer. The municipal schools these children attend are not failing for want of a donor; they are running at sixty to a class with teachers who are doing three jobs. Nothing we could give them changes the number in the room.
What we can change is the two hours after it. A child who cannot read at Class 5 is not going to catch up inside a class of sixty, but will catch up inside a group of eighteen with somebody who knows their name and their weak spot.
What it costs to keep one open
A centre runs at roughly ₹9,500 a month in rent and one teacher at ₹18,000. Add books, light and the kitchen’s share and a single centre costs a little over ₹4 lakh a year to keep open for around 220 children.
Those two figures are the ones people find hardest to fund and the ones without which nothing else happens. Rent is not a photograph. Neither is an audit.
How it runs
What actually happens
- 01
The teacher is from the lane
Nineteen of our twenty-six staff grew up in these neighbourhoods, and most went through these centres themselves. It is not sentiment. A teacher who knows which family moves for the cane season in November, and which lane floods, does not need to be told why a child stopped coming.
- 02
Eighteen to a room, and we hold the line
The government school these children attend runs at sixty to a class. At eighteen a teacher can name every child's weak spot by the third week. Every request to squeeze in a nineteenth gets refused, which is uncomfortable and has cost us donors.
- 03
Two hours, at the hour that suits the family
Six to eight in the evening at most centres, because that is after the school day and after the older children finish whatever work they do. A centre that runs at eleven in the morning is a centre designed around the staff.
- 04
We teach where the child is, not where the class is
A child in Class 6 reading at a Class 2 level gets Class 2 material, quietly and without being moved to a different room about it. Our own graded Marathi and maths workbooks exist because nothing off the shelf does this without humiliating somebody.
- 05
Attendance is the alarm, not the report
Three missed days in a row and somebody walks to the house that evening. Almost always it is money, a new baby, or a parent's illness. Almost never is it that the child stopped wanting to come.
How we are judged
The measures,
including the flat ones
Reading at grade level, Classes 3 to 5
31% on joining58% after two yearsMeasured with the ASER reading tool, which is free, standard and not ours, so the number can be argued with.
Class 10 board pass rate
64% in the catchment89% among our Class 10 groupPLACEHOLDER figures. Replace with the client's own tracked cohort data — they will have it, and it will be more convincing than anything invented.
Girls still enrolled at Class 9
52% in 201978% in 2025The bus passes did most of this. It is the cheapest thing we do and the one that moves the most.
What has not worked
We ran a tablet-based English programme for two years and closed it in 2024. It worked, but only for the children who were already doing well — the ones we had started it for could not get a turn on a device at home to practise, so the gap it opened was wider than the one it closed. The full write-up is on page 22 of the 2023–24 annual report, including what it cost.
In this programme
What a rupee buys here
- ₹460
A year of workbooks
Our own graded Marathi and maths workbooks, printed locally. A child writes in them, so they are not passed down.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's printing quote.
- ₹850
A school kit
A bag, two uniforms, shoes, and a year of notebooks. Handed out in June, because a child who arrives in a torn uniform in week one usually stops arriving by week six.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's last procurement invoice — this moves a lot with uniform prices.
- ₹1,000
A Class 10 board exam fee
The single cheapest place to stop a dropout. A child who has done nine and a half years and cannot find the exam fee in February loses all of it.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER, and deliberately rounded up. The Maharashtra State Board SSC fee itself is lower; the rest is the form, the photographs, the travel to the centre and the practical fees. Confirm the current year's figure with the board and the school.
- ₹1,900
A year's bus pass for a girl in Class 8 or above
The nearest secondary school is four kilometres away. Families who will let a boy walk it will not let a girl, and that single fact ends more girls' schooling here than fees do.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against current PMPML student concession rates.
- ₹2,900
A term at a learning centre
Four months of two hours a day, six days a week, in a group of no more than eighteen. Covers the teacher's time, the room, the light and the books.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's per-centre cost divided by enrolment.
- ₹8,400
A year at a learning centre
A full academic year for one child, meals not included. This is the number we use internally when we decide whether we can take another child on.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's audited per-child cost.
- ₹9,500
A month's rent on one centre
Two rooms and a toilet, on a lane children can reach without crossing a highway. The unglamorous line that no one wants to fund and nothing works without.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Confirm against the client's rent agreements.
- ₹18,000
A month of a centre teacher's pay
Almost all of our teachers grew up in these lanes and went through these centres. We pay them properly because the alternative is training somebody every eighteen months.
PlaceholderPLACEHOLDER. Must be replaced with the client's actual payroll figure — publishing a wrong salary is a problem with staff, not just with donors.