History and Impact

Vikramshila is a non-governmental organization, registered in 1992, with a mission to ‘make quality education a reality for all children in India’. Its vision is to help create a peaceful and equitable society free from injustice and exploitation. Vikramshila has been working in the area of education through its various projects providing technical support in the form of training and designing curricular content ranging from ECE to secondary education. It works with NGOs as well as with the government system in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Odisha for ensuring quality education to children to help them continue with their education with improved academic performance. Vikramshila has been working in the area of teacher education since 1989, across the K-10 spectrum, ranging from early childhood education, elementary education, and secondary education to foundations of education and subject pedagogies (Language, Maths, Science and Social Science). In addition, the organisation specializes in the area of development of training modules, theme based manuals, curriculum development and development of high quality teaching learning materials.

In the sphere of early childhood education, Vikramshila has worked with the United Nations World Food Programme from 1997 to 1999, in Madhya Pradesh; Dhar district, to capacitate 350 Anganwadi centres for a pilot in quality improvement. This programme was particularly challenging as most AWWs were illiterate and the specialty of this module was that literacy development was in built within it. In addition, Vikramshila has conducted an early childhood development course ECL (Early Childhood Learning) for 300+ teachers, over 12 years with the B. Ed department of St. Xaviers’ College from 1993-2005. The course curriculum covered Montessori, class 1 and class 2 levels. Many of the participants of the training (a one-year course) started their own ECE schools or joined different schools’ pre-primary sections. From 2012 onward, Vikramshila once again worked in the sphere of ECE, this time with the Department of Women and Child Development, in the area of curriculum development, training of SRG and DRG members and setting up of model AWCs.

Vikramshila has worked with a number of grass root NGOs and CBOs in Assam, Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, for their capacity building and organisational development.

In the area of teacher education and material/resources development, Vikramshila’s work with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Tripura since 2004 has led to the creation of a group of 385 Master Trainers, 166 BRPs and 214 CRPs. Through them, the organisation reached out to 30,000 government school teachers at the elementary level.

Along with the Tripura government, Vikramshila is undertaking the process of module and content development in social science pedagogy with 120 teachers in 45 schools across 3 districts of Tripura, reaching out to 2500 children.

In West Bengal, Vikramshila is working with 75 government schools, in partnership with SSA, Kolkata undertaking 100+ interventions, with 6000+ children, in library setup, early grade reading, integration of technology in education and remedial camps.

With the RMSA, Vikramshila has trained 600 teachers and 200 HMs, in West Bengal, in the area of Education to Employability and Life skills. The Madrasa project was started in 2008 with a view to improve the quality of education in Hooghly based Madrasas as our aim is to establish a model of good practices in different kinds of Madrasas in the same district. In this context, we have already been working with 10 Private Madrasas for the last three years in Hooghly for overall quality improvement. To bring forth the good practices we experienced in our former phase of work, we started intervening in 36 Govt. aided Madrasas (in partnership with the West Bengal Board of Madrasa Education) in Hooghly district so that the district can evolve as a model of excellence in ensuring good quality education.

Vikramshila’s direct implementation programmes, with children are currently ongoing in its rural school in Burdwan, Bigha, (since 1996) and supplementary learning centres (SLCs) in Kolkata (Naba Disha since 19999) and Howrah, since 2015.

Recognised as one of the leading agencies working in education, especially in eastern part of India, Vikramshila has partnered with eminent government agencies, Trusts and corporates such as Wipro, Tata Trusts, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Child Rights and You, UNICEF, SSA (West Bengal and Tripura), RMSA(West Bengal and Bihar), WBBME, ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, USAID, American Embassy Regional English Language Office (RELO), ITC, Tech Mahindra Foundation etc Vikramshila has been a part of the special task force or a part of the state resource group with state departments for Education to Employability, Early Childhood Education, Special Training, Inclusive Education and madrasa Education in West Bengal