Read India in NGOs Andhra Pradesh is largely a village-based campaign where the team has established a strong informal partnership with the village Panchayat, parents and other community members.
Approximately 40% of the classes are conducted on the school premises before or after school hours. A proposal and an MOU were submitted to the three district Project officers of Rajiv vidya mission for conducting the English classes in the primary schools of these three districts.

Were any written agreements/MOUs reached in these cases?
Yes, permission was given in the Medak district to train the Government teachers in English as per Pratham’s CAMaL methodology. What are the specificities of the partnership (primary and/or upper primary, subjects, duration, coverage, areas, and activities supported, monitoring). It is an official partnership with the district government. The program is currently being conducted in 187 schools during class hours covering 15,850 children and will run for a period of 6 months up to March 2011. The training was conducted by Pratham and financially support by SSA. There is joint monitoring of the program between Pratham and the Government officials.

Is there a Feedback or Information Sharing mechanism? How does it function?
SSA officials (MEO & MRPs) keep in communication with the Pratham team on regular basis, the same way the Pratham team also keeps SSA officials informed how classes are running. So far there has not been any written feedback information sharing, but from a few schools, the Pratham team has collected feedback on children's performance from teachers.

How is the feedback used? What hurdles were faced in the process?
Where ever there is a need for TLM and training SSA has informed Pratham, similarly if there is less participation of teachers in classroom teaching Pratham shared with SSA to correct.

Informal Cluster or Village Level Partnerships
What efforts have been undertaken to build cluster or village-level partnerships?
Pratham has been able to activate Academic Monitoring committees (AMCs-- monitoring and decision-making bodies at the local level, comprising the school HM, the Sarpanch, parents, and local NGOs like Pratham) have been established in most villages.

How strong is the relationship at different levels (state, district, block, cluster, village)?
There is no state-level partnership in AP. Pratham has been able to establish an informal partnership in some districts through training of Para teachers in the CAMaL methodology.
In Medak district, Pratham has an official partnership with the district SSA to implement English through CAMaL methodology across all schools in the district. Government teachers were trained by Pratham and the cost of the training was borne by the education department.
There is a strong informal village-level partnership across all districts in AP.
What contributes to the strength of these relationships or lack thereof
On the state level, the SSA is already trying out new methods of teaching-learning such as ABL (Activity Based Learning) and LEP (Learning Enhancement Program). Hence it becomes challenging for Pratham to convince the government to mainstream its methods into regular school.
However, on the village level, the strength of the partnership can be attributed to the advocacy efforts made by the Pratham team to popularize Read India and its methods through various activities.

How do these partnerships work in actual practice and what influence do they have on different stakeholders?
Government partnerships at the district and Mandal level help to cover children within the school, influence teachers with new methods. Particularly with English subject teachers have shown lot of interest as methods are simple and doable. MOUs with Panchayats involve Sarpanchs more closely in village classes and make them responsible to improve the learning levels of children.

To what extent has the government (at different levels) embarked upon an outcome-oriented approach?
SSA has launched the Program on Learning Enhancement program (LEP) in the year 2009 -10 and introduced SNEHABALA CARDS (ABL) for std.1-3. Training has been imparted to the teachers on the same, testing of the children has been done and gradings been given to the standard appropriate levels.