Yidan Prize for Banerji
A PROMINENT Indian education expert and an eminent economist have been awarded the 2021 Yidan Prize, the world’s highest education accolade.
Pratham Education Foundation chief executive Dr Rukmini Banerji and Professor Eric A Hanushek have been recognised for their “groundbreaking” work in improving the quality of education and outcomes for learners at scale.
Dr Banerji was named the winner of the Yidan Prize for Education Development while Professor Hanushek received the Yidan Prize for Education Research. Dr Banerji and her team pioneered an annual status of education report in India, which revealed literacy and numeracy gaps among children despite spending several years in school.
To address the gap, Dr Banerji’s ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ programme works with schools and local communities to provide basic reading and arithmetic skills to ensure that no student is left behind.
“The solutions that they have deployed towards this goal have proven to be cost-effective and scalable with a demonstrated potential to impact globally – disruptive education innovation with transformative results,” said Dorothy K Gordon, head of the Yidan Prize for Education Development judging panel and board member of the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Institute for Information Technologies in Education.
“Dr Rukmini Banerji and the Pratham team are a reminder that we need to focus on education quality and not just school enrolments.”
With the support of the Yidan Prize, Dr Banerji plans to strengthen and expand Pratham’s work with young children. Professor Hanushek is a Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His work focuses on education outcomes and the importance of teaching quality.
His work helped in shaping the UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (ensure inclusive and equitable quality education) by reframing targets for learning outcomes and has shown that economies are boosted by how much students learn, instead of years spent in school.