About the Case Studies

The Rishi Valley Educational Foundation (RIVER) has over the past two decades developed an activity-oriented pedagogical approach to learning designed to be effective in one room, one teacher, multi-grade elementary schools with no access to electricity. This program has been widely praised for its cost effectiveness, and today more than ten million elementary school students, mainly in India, are using this system.  Particular attention is now being given to how to scale the RIVER approach to larger numbers of teachers and how to adapt it for use in other cultures. 

This case will present the ways that the RIVER program has been, and is being, evaluated by the Foundation and by governments, what the results so far have shown and how to compare the impact of various adaptations of the RIVER program. 

About the Presenter

Y. A. Padmanabha Rao 

Y. A. Padmanabha Rao and his wife Rama Rao have led the development and expansion of the RIVER program from its beginning more than two decades ago  as a plan for improving the school for their village.  It has now become a worldwide movement for small, high quality community-based schools.  In 2009 The World Economic Forum (India) named them “Social Entrepreneurs of the Year.  ”