Primary education in Punjab faces fewer infrastructural constraints than other states of India. However, ASER data reveals that children in primary classes are not obtaining a strong foundation in basic language and basic arithmetic. To address this situation, the Government of Punjab and Pratham launched the state wide learning enhancement program in April 2008. This program (the Punjab Read India chapter) is called Parrho Punjab and is the flagship primary education project in the state. It enjoys strong support from senior state officials.

The key programs Pratham is conducting in Punjab are:

1) The HMEL Program:  Pratham is running this program with support from Hindustan Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) in Bhatinda district since March 2009. The project covers 4 community locations with learning support and balwadi classes.

2) Parrho Punjab: The program covers all 20 districts and reaches out to 13,000 Governemnt Primary schools of the state. Under the program, Pratham provides training, support and monitoring mechanisms. The program is reaching almost 1,200,000 children in the state. Approximately 42,000 teachers have been trained in Pratham methodology and Pratham’s teacher learning material has been distributed to every school in the state 

Some of the programs conducted in Punjab in the past include:

1) The Bharti Library Program: Pratham conducted this program with support from the Bharti Foundation from 2006 to March 2009. The project which was a concerted effort to promote libraries in select government schools was carried out in 51 schools of Ludhiana district. The program was ranked among the best Bharti Library Programs by the foundation.

2) L2R and Libraries in Bhatinda: Pratham in collaboration with the district education authorities conducted L2R and library classes  in 180 schools of Bhatinda from 2006 to 2008. There was a huge learning improvement in the children who were a part of the program.