Chrysalis

22 years ago, a young mother found that her kids "went grudgingly every morning to school & returned back joyfully." When she explored more as to why this was so, she found two principle reasons -

• Uninspiring textbooks and learning materials that children had to study as part of schooling
• Teachers who were dealing with increasingly more confident & connected kids but dealing with methods that they were schooled in, leading to disengagement

This young mother was determined to turn this around for her kids and started working with their teachers in a small way. Over the years, Chitra Ravi, Founder & CEO evolved Chrysalis into education research & innovation organisation, partnering with 1000+ schools across India, which includes public / govt. schools as well as privately run ones.

Our vision is to 'Awaken the Human Potential in every Child.' We believe that every child is unique and that education must help discover this uniqueness and further, nurture it in the best possible way. A utilitarian model of education, focused primarily on preparing kids to be 'useful young adults for the marketplace' is what we want to change and instead, create a model of education that allows every individual to blossom into a better version of themselves.

Our mission is to incorporate, within the core curriculum and teaching-learning practices, tools & techniques, that allow for more student-centered classrooms. Through these, we create classrooms where students are better engaged in the learning process and this paves way for better conceptual understanding. Further, the teaching tools and techniques that we provide also incorporate a strong emphasis on integrating socio-emotional learning along with cognitive domains.

We work with teachers and educational leaders in incorporating these techniques, through continuing professional development and coaching. While doing so, we ensure that we are compassionate when dealing with fixed mindsets, but also courageous to call out what can be potentially detrimental to the growth of the child. Ultimately, we believe in pursuing excellence in everything we do, because we are genuine in our concern for the child. Working in a country that has more than 1.5 million schools, we realise that we have taken up a daunting task. However, we are close to 200 like-minded people and we do our best with utmost joyfulness. Our 1000+ partner schools recognise our core values, and this is evident in the 85 % customer-retention rate that we have maintained for more than a decade now.

Chitra started off as Head of Product Development. She is an innovator at heart, with a passion to change education. She has been instrumental in creating ThinkRoom, the flagship product at Chrysalis.

Over time, as Founder & CEO, she oversees several key functions within the organisation while being responsible for overall organisational strategy. In the current growth phase of the company, she is also responsible for fund-raising.

Most importantly, Chitra can be called the Vision Custodian - she ensures that in and through everything that we do, we Stand up for the Child.

In her role as CEO, Chitra is known to straddle multiple responsibilities with elan. Others in the company have often marveled at her ability to work long hours, keep a tab on multiple projects and ensure each of them are making progress. What's more, she always manages to find time for herself - she is a certified mindfulness coach and foremost wellness enthusiast within the company.

Chitra will be assisted by Balasubrahmanian, who is Head of Learning Transformation. It is the team that is directly responsible for programme delivery and impact. Bala, as he is known, manages a team of 40 + consultants who are located in various parts of India. These consultants visit schools to deliver Teacher Professional Development, monitor programme implementation, handhold and coach teachers and assist in troubleshooting.

Bala reports directly to Chitra, and both of them are passionate about creating impact. Since he is responsible for impact in over 1000 schools, he is rightly placed to play an active role in assisting the Team Lead in this endeavour.

A comprehensive solution for schools comprising of textbooks, lesson plans, digital content & teacher professional development, Thinkroom transforms the classroom.

India is home to more than 1.5 million schools and employs more than 10 million teachers. The post-independence era challenges of enrollment and attendance have largely been solved over the years. All children are now enrolled in either government-run or privately managed schools, especially with the advent of relevant legislature, namely the Right to (Free & Compulsory) Education Act, 2009.

However, India may be facing what many term as a 'learning crisis' now. Multiple credible studies have shown that school-going students in their formative years are failing to acquire foundational skills, that is, literacy and numeracy. With a large population of young Indians who need to be educated for the workforce and to enhance the quality of their lives, India faces a formidable challenge - that of improving the quality of educational outcomes especially at Foundational Stages of education.

Specifically, some of the challenges are -

• lack of focus on student learning outcomes
• emphasis on rote-learning and other archaic forms of pedagogy
• lack of emphasis on overall development of students, especially in socio-emotional development

These challenges emerge from a wide variety of reasons. Pre-service teacher education is poorly regulated, leading to abysmal quality of teachers. In-service professional development opportunities are few or none at all for a large majority of teachers. All this results in teachers themselves being placed in a precarious situation - most of them are schooled in the industrial-era model of education and fail to understand the need for change. Those that do, have limited or no access to resources, including tools and techniques that will enable them to incorporate more student-centered pedagogies in their classrooms.

It is this problem that we aim to solve - that of equipping teachers, so as to change the crux of what happens inside thousands of classrooms. We wish to transform the quality of interactions between teachers and students, so that millions of students gain a meaningful education that not just prepares them for a job but that allows them to be a better version of themselves, thereby creating a meaningful and fulfilling life for themselves.

Indian education requires students to learn Math, Science, Social Studies and English, apart from one other Indian language depending on which state the school is located in. The Central Government defines the curriculum framework, through the National Curriculum Framework 2022, which in turn emerges from the National Education Policy 2020. Schools, especially privately run ones, are free to choose and frame their own curriculum, including textbooks and other learning materials. This is where ThinkRoom comes in.

A comprehensive solution for schools comprising of textbooks, lesson
plans, digital content & teacher professional development, Thinkroom transforms the classroom.

The textbooks are designed based on constructivist and inquiry-based approaches to learning. They are written in such a way that through a series of questions, puzzles and activities, students discover the various concepts that they are mandated to learn as per the curriculum framework

The teacher material (called Facilitator's Handbook) consists of lesson plans that define learning outcomes and success criteria, based again on the National Curriculum Framework. They also contain detailed guidelines and plans for the teachers on how to conduct the various activities through which they can facilitate learning in their classrooms. In addition, teachers also have access to a host of digital content including interactive audio-visual content, quizzes and worksheets that equips the teachers with all that they need to enhance their classroom pedagogy. All they need to do is put these tools and techniques to the best use.

However, it is easier said that done. A typical teacher who first encounters the Chrysalis textbooks and lesson plans is likely to ask, "But why should we ask a kid what he or she liked about this lesson? Or how it relates to their own life? Or what plants they have actually seen in their neighbourhood? Such questions won't figure in the end-term exam anyways!" Teaching to the test is still rampant and here is where the team of consultants of Chrysalis comes to play. Located across India, they travel to the different partner schools to deliver PD sessions, handhold teachers, monitor the implementation of the ThinkRoom programme using scientifically designed tools and to assist in troubleshooting.

It is a combination of all these elements, refined over more than a decade, that ensures that more than 85 % of schools choose to continue year-on-year, with Chrysalis.

Foundational Research - The Research and Development team at Chrysalis regularly access research papers and best practices from across the world. We have studies curriculum frameworks and curricula of several countries, including New Zealand and Singapore, to name of a few. Importantly, the team is also constantly reading, interpreting and translating to action, the policy documents released by the Ministry of Education, India, including the National Education Policy 2020 and National Curriculum Framework 2022.

Formative Research - Chrysalis' consultants track the transformation in schools through scientifically designed tools consisting of clearly defined rubrics. Data from thousands of classrooms across India are tracked centrally by a team of analysts, who in turn provide insights to back to the consultants in terms of which specific areas to intervene in, in each school. This data also provides crucial inputs to the Teacher Professional Development modules designed at Chrysalis. The data is also used to draw correlations between the interventions by the consultants and the results, in terms of student learning outcomes.

Summative Research - At least one independent third party evaluation has been conducted in a sample set of schools. Results show favourable changes in these schools, in comparison with the test group.

In the initial years, programme measurements largely focused on classroom inputs - that is, to see if the pedagogy employed by the teacher was changing. While there was some improvement, it had only a marginal impact. Over time, the indicators of assessment were widened - to include indicators related to school systems to ensure a more holistic assessment of schools. Recent study of this data over several years has revealed a clear correlation between the input data (classroom and school systems) and student learning outcomes. This emphasis on school systems led to Chrysalis instituting what is called Systemic Practices across its 1000 schools. By definition, these practices are institutionalised by the school leaders to ensure that everyone who is part of the school is implementing these practices. This we hope will lead to accelerating the transformation and also ensuring a minimum level of quality within partner schools.

Secondly, the data also showed clear relationships between the work done by consultants and resultant changes being reflected in schools. This helped Chrysalis identify and help those consultants who were struggling by providing targeted professional development for them, while also supplementing their effort in their respective schools through hybrid PD models.

Thirdly, data also showed a clear correlation between sustained PD efforts and transformation in schools. While PD could not be indefinitely extended to schools through traditional means, Chrysalis has innovated several hybrid delivery models to ensure efficiency while also supporting teachers adequately.

These are a few examples to show how the data has helped. Chrysalis prides itself in collecting 50 + datapoints during each of it's 6 to 10 interactions with each of its 1000 partner schools across the school year. The wealth of data is a treasure that keeps endlessly giving.

The impact (student learning outcomes) and transformation (classroom pedagogy) measurement model that Chrysalis employs consists of multiple tools for programme monitoring and evaluation. These tools have been refined over the years, mostly by in-house technical expertise of Chrysalis. Currently, we see the following areas where we can do with some help -

• validation & improvement of the tools used for monitoring and evaluation
• as a business, Chrysalis is bound to maintain expenses. This means the team of consultants are constrained by the number of times they can visit a school. This results inherently places a limitation in terms of the validity of the data being collected. We have, for instance, got teacher supervisors to supplement the data with their own independent evaluations. However, we see scope for improvement in this areas
• while vast amounts of data are collected and analysed on an annual basis, we also believe that it may help us to make them more statistically robust using relevant research methods which may be more easily accessible to reseachers.

Broadly put, the Chrysalis Theory of Change is - "If the input parameters in classrooms are enhanced, it will lead to better outcomes in terms of student learning.". Our first research question is to validate this theory of change using data from almost a decade across several hundred schools that Chrysalis has access.

Chrysalis has chosen to operate as a for-profit, for pragmatic reasons more than anything else. Yet, we have, as said earlier, enjoyed a 85 % customer retention rate for over a decade now. Given this context, the second research question would be 'given the business constraints, what factors can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the operating model?'

Output 1 - By studying our theory of change, we hope to have a validated and (if required) revised TOC.

Output 2 - As already described, the programme monitoring uses several tools. We hope that these tools and the rubrics can be validated and revised as necessary

Output 3 - If we were to design an independent randomised control study in say 50 of our partner schools, what would it look like?

Output 4 - A list of qualitative evidences that can best be used to showcase the impact of our programme, notwithstanding the quantitative data being collected and described thus far.

Output 1, 2 and 4 are already critical elements in the programme. Only, they are currently designed and implemented entirely by our in-house consultants and other staff. By validating and enhancing these as required, these revised outputs will naturally be incorporated into the programme with immediate effect at the start of a fresh academic year (March), given that data collection has already started and we can not make changes in the tools midway through the school year

Output 3 will help us conceptualise this kind of a study and look for the funds for it. It will help us go to sponsors / partners with a clear pitch so that we can institute such a study, in case the funds can not be internally generated.

In the immediate turn of things, we hope that the LEAP Project will help us identify key levers for improving efficiency in our programme delivery. This will help improve our efficiency as a team and in turn, serve our partner schools better.

Currently, Chrysalis works with 1000 + schools across India. As a business, we are committed to scaling it to 5000 schools in the next 3 years. Outcomes and outputs from the LEAP Project will ensure that we are able to create better impact across thousands of schools, serving hundreds of thousands of students to gain a better education.