- Founded by T4 Education and HP, the new award will be given to an outstanding individual who has demonstrated impact, leadership, and advocacy in the field of education
NEW DELHI: India’s Ashish Dhawan, Founder and Chairperson of the Central Square Foundation, and Pranav Kothari, CEO of Educational Initiatives (Ei), have been named among the ten Finalists for the inaugural Asia Education Medal. Founded this year by T4 Education and HP, the new award will be given to an outstanding individual who has demonstrated impact, leadership, and advocacy in the field of education.
The Asia Education Medal recognises the tireless work of those who are transforming education across the continent – celebrating the stories of those who have lit the spark of change so others will be inspired to take up the torch. It is given to an outstanding individual who has demonstrated impact, leadership, and advocacy in the field of education.
The winner of the Asia Education Medal will be invited to attend the World Schools Summit in Dubai on 23-24 November and, in recognition of the urgent need to solve the teacher recruitment and retention crisis to tackle learning gaps, the winner will be entitled to nominate a school of their choice to receive membership of T4 Education’s Best School to Work programme – an independent, evidence-based mechanism to certify schools for their culture and help them transform their working environment to attract and retain the best teachers.
Mayank Dhingra, Senior Education Business Leader at HP, said:
“Congratulations to India’s Ashish Dhawan and Pranav Kothari on being named Finalists for the Asia Education Medal 2024. Their passion and dedication to transforming education will inspire countless others to follow in their footsteps in building a world where quality education is enjoyed by all.
“HP has a bold goal to accelerate digital equity for 150 million people globally by 2030. Only by joining forces and aligning with NGOs, government, educators and businesses can we truly improve the education environment. The Asia Education Medal brings together all those who are changing the face of Asian education, whose work we must all learn from if the world is to meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.”
Vikas Pota, Founder and CEO of T4 Education, said:
“The Asia Education Medal honours changemakers where change is needed most. Where learning gaps remain stubbornly persistent and where deep inequalities remain.
“If we are to tackle these colossal challenges, and unlock the continent’s future, we must build a community of leaders from every sphere of society committed to educational transformation. Leaders like Ashish Dhawan and Pranav Kothari. Asia, and the world, has so much to learn from your inspirational stories and your vital contribution to the next generation.”
Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and Chairperson of the Central Square Foundation (CSF), one of the most important contemporary education philanthropies in India. His work to successfully champion Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) has made him one of the most influential education philanthropists in India in the last decade. Founded in 2012, CSF played a catalytic role in centring FLN as the primary objective of the K-12 education ecosystem in India, which serves 250 million children.
Pranav Kothari is CEO of Educational Initiatives (Ei) in India, an organisation that employs the twin levers of cutting-edge pedagogical research and technology-based solutions to help students across different socio-economic backgrounds learn with understanding. Through his work, Kothari has sought to address the challenge that while school enrollment has expanded in India with the broadening of the country’s education infrastructure, schooling has not translated into learning.
The Finalists for the Asia Education Medal 2024 are:
- Ashish Dhawan, Founder and Chairperson, Central Square Foundation, India
- Baela Jamil, CEO, Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) - Centre for Education and Consciousness, Pakistan
- Duriya Aziz Singapore Wala, Senior Vice President (Education, International), Scholastic Inc, Singapore
- Ethel Agnes Pascua-Valenzuela, Commissioner, Commission on Higher Education, Philippines
- Korvi Rakshand, Founder & Executive Director, JAAGO Foundation, Bangladesh
- Nargish Khambatta, Principal & CEO GEMS Modern Academy, UAE
- Pranav Kothari , CEO, Educational Initiatives, India
- Shahnaz Al-Sadat, Chairperson, LeapEd Services Sdn Bhd, Malaysia
- Shinichi Yamanaka, President, KADOKAWA DWANGO Education Institute, Japan
- Yuhyun Park, Founder & CEO, DQ Institute, Singapore
Nominations for the Asia Education Medal opened in February 2024 for individuals working to improve pre-kindergarten, K-12, vocational and university education who are either educators or school leaders, civil society leaders, public servants, government officials, political leaders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, or technologists.
The Asia Education Medal is one of the three World Education Medals established by T4 Education and HP. It joins the Africa Education Medal, which was founded in 2022 and has grown to be Africa’s most prestigious education accolade, as well as the new Latin America Education Medal which was also launched this year.
The winner will be announced in October. They will be chosen by a Jury comprising prominent individuals based on rigorous criteria.
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PROFILES OF FINALIST FROM INDIA
Profile of Ashish Dhawan
Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and Chairperson of the Central Square Foundation (CSF), one of the most important contemporary education philanthropies in India. His work to successfully champion Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) has made him one of the most influential education philanthropists in India in the last decade.
Founded in 2012, CSF played a catalytic role in centring FLN as the primary objective of the K-12 education ecosystem in India, which serves 250 million children. Dhawan launched CSF shortly after India enacted the Right to Education Act, which guaranteed free and compulsory education for children aged 6 to 14. But while access to education has become almost universal, India still suffers from poor quality education being delivered, with low learning levels and high dropout rates.
Dhawan brought to CSF a focus on data to objectively analyse areas in which private philanthropic investment could catalyse systemic change and he made strategic investments in a number of NGOs to increase their capacity to work on innovative approaches to improve FLN outcomes.
CSF’s initiatives span innovation, policy and practice, and focus on learning impact at scale. In 2015, CSF began a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (their first international education investment) centred on FLN. By 2020, the Indian government had issued a new National Education Policy that focused on achieving FLN and the central government rolled out the NIPUN Bharat Mission to implement FLN-oriented programmes. While creating systemic alignment around common goals, CSF is working with central, state and district-level governments to enhance their capacity to implement and monitor progress on these FLN initiatives through funding and staffing project management units. CSF is now working in half of India's 28 states and at the district level in six of India's largest states.
Additionally, CSF prioritises EdTech integration, aiming to deploy digital solutions for in-class and at-home learning and establish evidence-based practices while harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence to augment learning outcomes. CSF is deeply committed to Early Childhood Education reforms, recognising the critical role it plays in laying a strong groundwork for children's learning journies, thereby augmenting FLN outcomes. CSF also works in the area of school governance, extending its system-level approach to children in both private and government schools, to strengthen the country's education landscape.
Dhawan is also the Founding Chairperson of Ashoka University and was recently appointed to the governing board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before his second career as a philanthropist, he was among India’s most successful private equity investors. He founded and ran ChrysCapital, the country’s leading private equity firm. He is also Founder-CEO of The Convergence Foundation, a grant-making incubator that builds institutions focused on India's economic growth.
Profile of Pranav Kothari
Pranav Kothari is CEO of Educational Initiatives (Ei) in India, an organisation that employs the twin levers of cutting-edge pedagogical research and technology-based solutions to help students across different socio-economic backgrounds learn with understanding.
Through his work, Kothari has sought to address the challenge that while school enrollment has expanded in India with the broadening of the country’s education infrastructure, schooling has not translated into learning. Rote learning, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ teaching approach, low-quality assessments, and weak accountability are among the issues he seeks to tackle, pointing out that children reach young adulthood without having acquired basic skills like calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor’s instructions, or understanding a bus schedule.
Ei works to confront these problems through large-scale assessments and Ei Mindspark - a Personalised Adaptive Learning tool that identifies individual student learning levels and misconceptions in Mathematics, their vernacular language, and English at a nuanced level through diagnostic tests based on product research from over 20 million+ assessments. It then creates an individualised learning path for each student, providing targeted instruction to enable teaching at the right level. It employs a gamified interface, using questions, activities and challenges to engage learners.
Available for grades 1-10 in eight Indian languages and English, Ei Mindspark has been able to reach over 500,000 students across five different countries. Regular use of the tool has been shown to lead to a twofold increase in Mathematics scores and 2.5 increase in Hindi test scores for those using Mindspark over four and a half months relative to those who do not. Ei Mindspark empowers teachers by allowing them to both control the activation of topics and use student data to understand progress and learning gaps.
Kothari’s company also recognises the importance of high-quality competency-based assessments and deep insights into misconceptions. These not only help in identifying knowledge gaps in student learning levels but also promise a solution to the prevalent rote-learning crisis in the country. Ei has tested more than 10 million students in India since 2001. This spans primary and secondary levels and every state and urban, rural and tribal parts of India. Another important aspect of EI’s work is to build systemic capacity within state and governmental institutions like Educational Boards on creating, using and understanding assessments and assessment data.
Kothari is a TEDx speaker and an INK Fellow. In 2019, The World Economic Forum's Schwab Foundation named him the Corporate Social Intrapreneur of the Year, a recognition that reflects his commitment to driving social impact through business. He studied Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior to joining Ei, he worked at GTI Capital and the Boston Consulting Group in five countries.
