STiR Education

12 Aug

MLC VANGUARD | Created by STiR Education

STiR Education is an international NGO that supports education systems to reignite intrinsic motivation, so that every child, teacher and official is motivated to learn and improve. Since 2012, we’ve reached more than 200,000 teachers and 6 million children in India and Uganda.

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12,236,712 Lives Impacted

To thrive in an increasingly complex world, all children will need to learn and adapt throughout their lives and education systems need to support them by instilling motivation for learning and improvement. But education systems are failing to address this need. Despite huge increases in education spending over the past two decades, children are not achieving the desired outcomes. A lack of belief and investment has led to widespread demotivation of teachers and officials, as seen through high levels of absenteeism and low levels of job satisfaction. For example, a 2014 UNESCO report in Uganda estimated that 84% of primary teachers wanted to quit the profession in two years.

Covid-19 has exacerbated this challenge by deepening inequalities in our education systems. We must take this opportunity to radically rethink system change in education. Our approach to improving education systems has a unique focus on strong role-modelling and trusting relationships at all levels – between a child and their teacher, and between the teacher and the school leaders and officials who support them. If every member of a system is intrinsically motivated with a desire to improve their classroom practice, the impact at child level can be huge.

The Innovation

Our programme works at all levels of education systems by motivating and supporting the education workforce (officials, school leaders and teachers) to realise sustained improvement in learning. District officials participate in termly training institutes with their peers to understand new practices for each term, they then lead training for school leaders who lead teacher network meetings effectively. Every month, 20-30 teachers meet in peer networks – which is led by school leaders to expose them to best classroom practices and strengthen peer connection. Teachers introduce new practices in their classrooms, get feedback by school leaders and refine their action plan accordingly. After each third network, teachers move on to a new topic and the cycle continues.

Our approach maximises cost-efficiency (less than $1 per child annually) and achieves huge scale (reaching every child and teacher in our partner systems) in partnership with national and state governments. We’re the only organisation globally focused on building intrinsic motivation in at scale. Since 2012, we’ve reached more than 200,000 teachers and 6 million children across India and Uganda. We’re now looking to expand to at least four more countries to reach up to 1 million teachers and 25 million children worldwide by 2025.

About STiR Education

STiR Education is working towards a world where teachers love teaching and children love learning. Government ownership and adoption are essential for long-term sustainability. We have developed deep learning partnerships with three state governments in India and the national education system in Uganda, with all activities delivered by existing government officials to build strong ownership. And we collaborate to customise and design content for each geography, while STiR works closely to ensure that the programme aligns with their policies and priorities. We are guided by our core values of humility, openness, ownership and purpose, and role-model these values with our government partners to build a culture of constant learning and support our long-term sustainability. STiR is led by CEO Girish Menon, who has more than 30 years’ experience in the international development sector.