Report

Evaluation of Educate Girls’ scale-up in India

Jeff McManus , Nilay Sagar , Susmit Biswas , Akashi Kaul , Aishwarya Kumar 18 March 2025

©Educate Girls/Ahad Hafeez Photography

Executive Summary

Educate Girls, an NGO founded in 2007, works to reduce educational inequities, particularly among girls in under served regions of India. Through technical support to state governments and a cohort of thousands of community- based volunteers (Team Balikas), Educate Girls identifies out-of-school girls, builds community awareness and delivers foundational literacy and numeracy instruction via the Gyan ka Pitara (GKP) structured pedagogy. By collaborating with government efforts like NIPUN Bharat, Educate Girls provides essential support to teachers while reinforcing the importance of consistent schooling. The volunteers also help run Bal Sabhas (Girl Leadership Councils) and assist in preparing School Improvement Plans through School Management Committees.

In 2019, Educate Girls was selected by the Audacious Project to scale their program to over 35,000 villages across four states with some of the lowest levels of educational attainment in India: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. Within these areas, the Audacious Project set the following ambitious targets for Educate Girls to achieve from 2019-2025:

IDinsight and Sambodhi Research and Communication were engaged to assess Educate Girls’ scaled program through two activities.

The first evaluation activity was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to estimate the causal effect of Educate Girls’ scale-up on learning outcomes in a representative sample of villages that received the primary learning program (Gyan ka Pitara, or GKP) in Madhya Pradesh. Learning outcomes were measured using a modified ASER assessment to capture foundational skills in Hindi literacy, English literacy, and numeracy.

The second activity was verification of Educate Girls’ monitoring data on enrollment, retention, life skills programming, and school governance and infrastructure. Verification was conducted in a representative sample of all program villages across all four program states at midline and endline.

Originally, the first round of data collection was intended to happen at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year. However, due to the COVID pandemic and school closures, the baseline was delayed until the 2022-23 school year. Midline data was collected at the end of the 2022-23 school year, and endline data was collected at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

Key findings

59,671

schools across which activities were verified

2X

learning gains in treatment vs control group

1.25

SD effect sizes

Learning Outcomes: Randomized Controlled Trial

After one year of receiving the GKP program, students in treatment schools gained on average 0.5 ASER levels (or +20%) more than students in control schools. These modest but statistically significant gains were concentrated in English and math skills, and effects were slightly larger for girls than for boys.

After two years of receiving the GKP program, students in treatment schools gained on average 4.0 ASER levels more than students in control schools. Treatment students gained twice as many points on the assessment as control students, representing 27 percentage points more correct answers on the assessment, and corresponding to a large standardized treatment effect of 1.25 SD. Treatment effects were large and positive across all subjects (Hindi, Math, English), grades (3, 4, 5), genders, and districts. Treatment effects were slightly smaller for students who were exposed to only one year of the program (3.2 ASER levels), but still very large, statistically significant, and positive across all subgroups.

Enrollment, Life Skills, School Improvement: Data Verification

Alongside the learning results, we verified data reported by Educate Girls on enrollment, retention, life skills education, and school governance and infrastructure across a representative sample of 42,078 schools where Educate Girls was active at midline and 59,671 schools where Educate Girls was active at endline. Our independent samples of 344 schools at each round of data collection were selected from across all four states. Educate Girls’ records were successfully validated during both rounds of data collection, with discrepancy rates for all indicators well below the 15% threshold (aggregated across states) set in the evaluation terms of reference.