Yes, the product has been in production since 2007 with consistent results.

We have spent a lot of time to make sure the software will run perfectly with almost zero technical support. It is used in remote villages where support is tough to access. Even so, we always have Supervisors and Senior Supervisors patrolling all districts and blocks in which we operate to ensure that courses run smoothly without interruption.

Yes, we have run up to 500 centres with military precision. We have manuals, procedures, accountability systems, management information systems, staff quality control and quality control systems.

Our team includes expert trainers and managers from diverse backgrounds – ranging from the Indian Army to dotcom hotspots of the US. We are experienced in large roll-outs.

No, all training must be given by instructors who have been trained by Development Alternative Group (in India) or ReadingWise (outside India) in order to become an instructor for the students.

The prerequisite for an instructor is that they should have successfully completed 10 years of schooling, and have good communication abilities. It is preferable that they live in or near the locality where they will be delivering the training sessions. Then they must complete the authorised TARA Akshar+ Instructor Course, and pass their exam.

The initial Instructors Course takes 17 days to complete.

No. Computers have brought us many advances, but they still cannot substitute for a well-trained instructor present in the classroom.

The topics covered in the Instructor Course are:

• Controlling students and communicating with them
• Using a laptop
• TARA Akshar and TARA Ganit softwares
• With difficult or slow students
• Mobilization
• Conducting examination in centres
• Procedures
• Gyan Chaupali
• Sensitization
• Life skills and personality development

The topics covered in the Instructor Course are: Resources needed to conduct a session are:

• A supply of electricity for at least two hours a day (Two hours will charge the UPS enough for one batch.)
• A laptop with at least 256mb RAM
• Good quality speakers in working order
• An Additional Battery
• At least five sets of special TARA Akshar+ Playing Cards
• One set of special TARA Akshar+ Large Flash Cards
• One pair of special TARA Akshar+ reading and writing books for each student
• A sets of special TARA Akshar+ Alphabet, Barakhadi, Numeric and Symbol charts – one for each student
• Pencils

The courses sessions last 100 minutes per day per batch.

Eight students is an optimum number to conduct a session. Ten is OK with experienced instructors. The smaller the batch, the more likely all students in the batch will pass.

Very important. That’s why we train our Executive Trainers very thoroughly, and ensure that our Executive Trainers train the Instructors thoroughly.

Oh yes, although retraining them is tried first. If they don’t keep up the pass rate, necessary action is taken.

No, it is never the students’ fault. If they are not progressing, it is the instructor’s fault. Some students will take longer than others, but a good instructor will get every student through it.

Some students tend to opt-out themselves from such classes. However, we do have some techniques to cope with this situation so that such students do not drop out.

Yes, the instructor must ensure that the 100 minutes is adhered to, and lessons consumer neither greater nor lesser time. The instructor must ensure that sessions start on-time and finish on-time. Students must attend classes every day for 6 days a week for 56 days.

Studies have shown that students recall the first 20 minutes of a lesson well, and the last 20 minutes well. So we have 20 minute sessions – five of them, switching the focus from reading (visual + aural skills on the computer) to writing (visio-spatial kinetic skills not on the computer) every 20 minutes. 100 minutes is both the maximum amount of study that non-educated people can do in one go without losing attention; AND it is the maximum time that Indian rural housewives want to give to classes for socio-economic reasons.

It is very difficult to judge the success of that campaign because there were no coordinated results published which showed the basic parameters, such as how many started, how many finished and how may passed.

One thing that has been fully agreed in the field of teaching people to read is that no single technique should be used exclusively, otherwise poor results are likely. A pattern-recognition/Analytic system is just one kind of visual system, and ignores students who do better with synthetic visual systems, aural systems and visio-spatial systems. We get good results because we use a wide range of techniques to make sure every student has a chance to learn and read; PLUS we use an extremely powerful visual memory association technique. Having said that, TARA Akshar+ is primarily a Synthetic system. But at the end of the day, it’s the results that count, and our results are more authentic, conclusive and established than most other organizations.