So we all have our own biases.
For example, some of us tend to think
that it's very difficult to transform failing government systems.
When we think of government systems,
we tend to think that they're archaic,
set in their ways,
and perhaps,
the leadership is just too bureaucratic to be able to change things.
Well, today,
I want to challenge that theory.
I want to tell you a story
of a very large government system
that has not only put itself on the path of reform
but has also shown fairly spectacular results
in less than three years.
This is what a classroom in a public school in India looks like.
There are 1 million such schools in India.
And even for me, who's lived in India all her life,
walking into one of these schools is fairly heartbreaking.
By the time kids are 11,
50 percent of them have fallen so far behind in their education
that they have no hope to recover.
11-year-olds cannot do simple addition,
they cannot construct a grammatically correct sentence.
These are things that you and I would expect
an 8-year-old to be able to do.
By the time kids are 13 or 14,
they tend to drop out of schools.
In India,
public schools not only offer free education —
they offer free textbooks, free workbooks,
free meals,
sometimes even cash scholarships.
And yet,
40 percent of the parents today
are choosing to pull their children out of public schools
and pay out of their pockets to put them in private schools.
As a comparison, in a far richer country,the US,
that number is only 10 percent.
That's a huge statement on
how broken the Indian public education system is.
So it was with that background
that I got a call in the summer of 2013
from an absolutely brilliant lady called Surina Rajan.