Eklavya: Pioneering Innovative Education Practices in India

India’s education system has long grappled with a persistent challenge: delivering meaningful, quality learning to millions of children, especially in rural and underserved areas. While policy reforms and government schemes have played their part, some of the most impactful changes have come from grassroots organizations that dared to challenge the status quo. One such organization is Eklavya – a Bhopal-based NGO that has spent over four decades reimagining how children learn, how teachers teach, and how communities participate in education. Its story is not just about schools and curricula; it is about a deeply held belief that transforming education is the most powerful thing a society can do for its future.

Origins and the vision behind Eklavya 🔗

Eklavya was formally registered as a society in 1982, but its roots stretch back further to the landmark Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP) – a bold experiment that began in 1972 in 16 middle schools across Hoshangabad district, Madhya Pradesh. The initiative was launched by two voluntary organizations, Kishore Bharati and Friends Rural Centre, with backing from the Madhya Pradesh state government. The core question the programme sought to answer was straightforward but radical: could the traditional textbook-centred, rote-memorization model of teaching science be replaced with something better – something built on inquiry, experimentation, and discovery?

The HSTP structured its curriculum around “science by doing.” Children were not expected to memorize laws and definitions but to arrive at understanding through hands-on experiments, data analysis, and group discussion in class. Scientists and academics from institutions like TIFR, Delhi University, and the IITs collaborated with school teachers to develop this curriculum – a unique partnership between the university world and rural classrooms.

The success of HSTP and the Social Science Teaching Programme (SSTP) that followed it made the need for a permanent organization clear. Eklavya was thus founded with the objective of conducting micro-level, field-based experiments in education and developing methods for their wider diffusion – inspired by the Mahabharata legend of Eklavya, the self-taught archer who learned through sheer dedication and initiative.

Education as essential infrastructure 🔗

One of Eklavya’s most distinctive contributions to educational discourse in India is its framing of education not as a social welfare measure, but as foundational national infrastructure. Eklavya explicitly holds that education is an infrastructure at least as important as roads, electricity, and telecommunications – a force that fundamentally determines the prosperity and well-being of a nation’s citizens. This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the guiding logic behind why the organization insists on quality, not just access.

From this perspective, cutting corners on education is no different from building a road that collapses. The foundation argues that progressive nations invest in education strategically and over the long term because it is the only sustainable solution to the social and economic challenges a country faces. Pre-primary and primary education, in particular, are identified as the most critical stages, as they shape the foundational character, habits of mind, and emotional disposition of a child. This framing has informed Eklavya’s insistence on developing high-quality teaching-learning materials and rigorous teacher training programmes rather than settling for minimal interventions.

A child-centric philosophy at the core 🔗

At the heart of Eklavya’s educational model is an unwavering commitment to the child as the central purpose of all education. Eklavya believes every child is unique and carries inborn gifts and talents. The role of the school and its teachers is to help each child discover and develop those talents individually – not in a “mass production manner.” This is a direct challenge to the one-size-fits-all approach that dominates most conventional schooling.

In practice, this child-centric approach means teachers are trained to act as facilitators rather than lecturers. Learning is structured around curiosity, exploration, and real-world relevance. Eklavya develops learner-centred teaching methodologies that foster problem-solving skills and encourage children to ask questions about their natural and social environment – with the long-term goal of making them lifelong, self-directed learners.

The educational material Eklavya has developed for classes 1 through 8 is widely recognized for exploiting children’s creative potential and integrating learning and teaching into the natural, playful activities of a child. Importantly, Eklavya does not believe in imposing curricula. Its position is clear: educational content and methods must be developed in close interaction with children, their parents, and their teachers.

The Hoshangabad experiment: learning without rote 🔗

The Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme remains Eklavya’s most celebrated contribution and arguably one of the most significant educational experiments in independent India’s history. HSTP based science education on the principles of “learning by doing experiments,” “learning through activity,” and “learning from the environment” – in direct contrast to the prevailing textbook-centred rote method. Children conducted real experiments, observed outcomes, tabulated data, and drew their own conclusions. The laboratory was not reserved for class IX but introduced from class VI onwards.

What made HSTP truly innovative was its insistence that content and syllabus should grow from teachers’ and students’ engagement with the local environment. Teachers came up with topics like Variation in Biology, Soil and Leaves, and World of Insects – not from prescribed syllabi, but from experimenting in the fields and villages around them. This grounded the curriculum in lived reality, making it far more meaningful to children in rural Madhya Pradesh.

The HSTP proved to be a landmark in the history of school education in India, recognized by academics and scientists as a path-breaking initiative of global significance. It demonstrated that the discovery approach to learning science was feasible even in resource-poor rural schools and that curriculum development did not have to be centralized within a single government body. The programme was eventually scaled up from 16 pilot schools to cover all middle schools in Hoshangabad district by 1978. Its legacy influenced the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005, where Eklavya collaborated with NCERT in shaping the foundational principles of inquiry-based, child-centred learning for the entire country.

Reforming teacher training 🔗

Eklavya recognized early that curriculum reform without teacher transformation is meaningless. A new textbook delivered by an untrained or unmotivated teacher changes nothing. Eklavya looks at innovation holistically – reforms in classroom practices must be accompanied by reforms in examination systems, teacher training methods, and the way schools are managed. This integrated view of change is what distinguishes Eklavya’s approach from piecemeal interventions.

Teacher training programmes under Eklavya are designed not just to convey new content knowledge, but to fundamentally shift how teachers think about their role. Eklavya has been actively working on mentoring and capacity building of teachers, trainers, and facilitators from various organizations, covering areas such as language, mathematics, science, child development, early childhood care, and the philosophy of education. Teachers trained through Eklavya’s programmes come to see themselves as co-learners rather than sole authorities in the classroom.

The organisation has also worked with NCERT, multiple State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs), and teacher education institutions. In recent years, it has collaborated with organizations like the Wipro Foundation, Aga Khan Foundation, and Educo on teacher professional development projects spanning Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

Community and parental involvement in education 🔗

One of Eklavya’s most enduring insights is that school reform cannot happen in isolation from the community it serves. Eklavya set up community-based learning centres – Shiksha Protsahan Kendras (SPKs) – in five districts of Madhya Pradesh to provide academic support to government school students and to create pathways for community members to get involved in managing their children’s education.

These SPKs are particularly significant for first-generation learners – children whose parents have had no schooling and cannot support learning at home. The centres help forge accountability linkages between schools and communities, making schools more responsive to the needs of the families they serve. Eklavya’s executive leadership has consistently emphasised that while working with the state is important, it is equally important to work with the community and engage them regularly.

Parents are not passive recipients in the Eklavya model. They are active stakeholders whose involvement in the educational process – through community workshops, school management engagement, and participatory curriculum development – ensures that schooling remains rooted in the social and cultural realities of the children. This sense of community ownership is what makes the model sustainable.

Publishing, outreach, and scaling impact 🔗

Beyond its field programmes, Eklavya has built an extensive body of educational literature in languages including Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, Bangla, Urdu, and several non-mainstream languages such as Gondi, Korku, and Mundari – a reflection of its commitment to reaching learners in their mother tongue. Its children’s magazine Chakmak and the teacher resource journal Sandarbh have been widely circulated and are available for free download.

The organization also runs Pitara activity centres – resource hubs stocked with study materials, books, science experiment kits, and toys – operating across 10 states. These centres serve as physical extensions of Eklavya’s vision, bringing quality learning resources within reach of communities that would otherwise have no access to them. Eklavya’s influence has extended to curriculum and textbook development support for the governments of Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh, amplifying its impact well beyond Madhya Pradesh.

Challenges and the road ahead 🔗

No story of educational reform is without its setbacks. The closure of the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme by the Madhya Pradesh government in July 2002 – after thirty years of operation – was a significant blow. Yet the institutional knowledge, the trained teachers, and the spirit of inquiry it seeded did not disappear. They became the foundation on which Eklavya continued to build.

Eklavya’s learning spaces are now explicitly extended beyond the school into the community, and the organization continues to adapt. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, it launched Mohalla Learning Activity Centres (MohLACs) – neighbourhood learning spaces facilitated by older students and young parents – to keep children engaged when schools were shut. This kind of adaptive, community-rooted response exemplifies precisely what makes Eklavya’s model resilient.

The organization’s greatest challenge remains scale. Working with and through governments takes time and patience – changing entrenched systems of working is slow. But Eklavya’s track record suggests that deep, sustained, community-rooted reform is both possible and necessary in a country as vast and diverse as India.

What do you think? Can the Eklavya model – built on child-centred learning, teacher empowerment, and community participation – serve as a blueprint for reforming public education across India’s diverse states? And what does it take for governments and civil society organizations to build the kind of long-term, trust-based partnerships that programmes like HSTP demonstrated are possible?

References

1. https://www.eklavya.in/about-us-eklavya/who-we-are
2. https://www.eklavya.in/past-work-top/programmes-past-top/hstp
3. https://www.eklavya.in/what-we-do
4. https://www.devex.com/organizations/eklavya-education-foundation-36906
5. https://in.linkedin.com/company/eklavyafoundation-bhopal
6. http://www.cisl.columbia.edu/grads/presi/EKLAVYA/EKLAVYA.html
7. https://www.kishorebharati.org/hstp/
8. https://www.eklavya.in/pdfs/reports/HSTP_STUDY_Report.pdf
9. https://www.eklavya.in/about-us-eklavya
10. https://www.rcrc.in/partners/eklavya-foundation/
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eklavya_foundation
12. https://thebetterindia.com/11976/eklavya-foundation-holistic-education-government-schools-madhya-pradesh/