iScuela

We are addressing the challenge of low learning levels in children from rural communities that are studying in public schools by providing access to quality education using technology.

These children are generally left behind from the city peers due to lack of infrastructure, very little access to good teachers and no source of self learning. All these factors result in lack of interest and that leads to high drop out rates. As per the latest Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2021, 67.6% of Indian households have smartphone ownership in India however learning levels still remain quite poor. Low accessibility to quality learning material, self learning platforms needs to be resolved.According to a World Bank  53% of 10 year olds in low- and middle-income countries are unable to read a simple story, and this could soar to 70% post pandemic.

We cannot leave these children behind and take away their chance to achieve their goals and dreams. It’s our prime responsibility to provide avenues to address the challenges they face and give them an equal opportunity to shine. 

iScuela is a unified learning ecosystem where teachers are provided with tools to deliver streamlined & integrated learning to students in schools. Students are given a self-learning platform to consume high quality education through technology. 

Key focus areas of our platform:

• Improving Access: Delivering high quality, regional and localised, interactive elearning content in schools which aids the teachers in making learning more engaging. After studying in the classroom, students get access to the content on their smartphones at home where they can learn at their own pace, take part in quizzes, interact with their teachers and peers. While smartphone penetration has increased at an encouraging pace, there are many households that don’t have have access to a smartphone or internet. For these households, we collaborated with the state and central governments to build and broadcast educational content delivered on various dedicated tv channels. This method was helpful in reducing the loss of learning for students during the pandemic. 

• Personalisation: Each student gets a personal experience when interacting and learning on our platform. We use artificial intelligence and machine learning to evaluate the usage and performance on multiple parameters to suggest remedial learning for each topic to help them get a better grip of the topic. 

• Intelligent Insights: By laying down this technology infrastructure and connecting students and teacher we can use the collected data points to help governments make informed interventions and policy decisions. Some instances are as follows:

1. A student performed exceedingly well in academics grade 6 and 7 but his/her performances dropped drastically in grade 8, with data points that we collect we can easily list out such cases and interventions can be made via teachers or parents. The student in this case could be suffering from a mental health challenge, could be involved with some anti-social elements or family could just be facing some financial challenge. The right reason could be identified and we can save the child’s future with an intervention at the right time.
2. Data points pointing to a particular school or a region comprising of few villages with low girl child enrolment or participations, as compared to other regions across a state, could be investigated. This could be due to non availability or proper functioning of toilets, non availability of sanitary napkins or just low public awareness. With this information the government can spend on infrastructure in that areas, plan public awareness campaign to educate villagers to send their girls to schools.
3. Low numeracy or literacy levels of students in a region/village compared to the average across the state, could mean the need for teacher training in that area. Government along with social organisations working in this area could plan for teacher training sessions.

We believe iScuela, while solving the accessibility problem, also acts as a foundation on which we can continue to build intelligent systems which can help make right interventions to remove unseen hurdles for students to learn.

iScuela ecosystem delivers high quality learning to public school students in rural and semi-urban areas, giving these students a more intuitive and engaging learning experience at school and a self-learning platform accessible at home. With this, they can study anywhere, like their peers from wealthy backgrounds, anytime in English or regional languages. We also provide interactive tools and content for teachers to teach better at school as opposed to the traditional blackboard and chalk methods. These tools and comprehensive content ensure a level of consistency in teaching across schools in the state. Finally, the Government gets to make policy and expansion plan of their e-learning initiatives using our analytics dashboard where right from the class/grade level all the way up-to the state level all the usage, performance data and insights are available. These insights help in planning upgrades and enhancements delivering better governance. We would hence believe that students, teachers and government are direct beneficiaries. We believe that parents are indirect beneficiaries. Most parents of students in public schools can’t afford extra classes for their children, as either these classes are very expensive, or the teachers stay too far from their village for them to take their kids everyday. Teaching standard in the public schools in Punjab has also gone up (As per the ranking of the central government assessment, where Punjab has been ranked 1 across India) which has also dramatically reduced the reliance on extra classes.

Myself (Maninder Bajwa) and Gagandeep Singh are the founders of this initiative.  We completed our higher studied in Melbourne, Australia but decided to come back to our native state of Punjab in India to work on iScuela over 10 years ago. While we had the privilege to be exposed to opportunities internationally, our closest relatives even today are living in the rural areas. While we knew about the low levels of learning in students, we could not comprehend the true picture until we were amongst the students and teachers. We collaborated with Rotary India Literacy Mission and approached Government of Punjab to give us a chance to do an on-ground study and propose a solution. 

This is when we conceptualised the event titled “Gram Gyan Sabha” (Village Knowledge Meet). This event was a village level discussion which constituted of the Elected Village representative called “Sarpanch”, District Education Officer, Principal of the local government school and a student. We facilitated 25 such sessions in different villages across the entire state and simply listened to everything the panelists said about the schooling, learning, challenges and more. Looking back, this exercise was the best thing we ever did as this gave us invaluable insights into what was needed. Post these sessions we requested the government to allocate a group of their expert teachers so that we could work with them to develop solution which will be used on the ground. 

By conducting Gram Gyan Sabhas and involving the teachers at every step of the way, we were able to create a platform which the teachers starting promoting as their own, which meant the solution acceptance amongst the teachers was very high. This is probably the reason why we have crossed 12000+ schools in Punjab where our classroom solution is being used. We duplicated this in the neighbouring state of Haryana and we got similar encouraging results.

We believe that iScuela can be scaled up, with the right connects and partnerships we can take our solution to many regions across the globe which face similar challenges in their education system as India. 

MIT Solve is a reputable platform and if we do "Become a Solver”, the platform will increase our reach and give us great visibility which we can use to connect with right partners to scale our solution. Interactions with like minded social entrepreneurs will also give us a great exposure and ideas to scale our solution.

iScuela differentiates from other solutions in three ways: 

1. It's a holistic approach with the ability to work with any technology solution, old or new, so that the schools don’t have to invest in new hardware.

2. Ready acceptance and adoption by teachers who value the simplicity and ease of use.

3. It is available in many regional languages which helps to scale it across India.

We believe iScuela is innovative as it is a new method that connects all the dots to improve learning in the public sector; whether it’s the internet penetration, localisation, lack of teachers, or redundant hardware. We believe innovation is not just inventing something for the future but it’s also how to develop a solution which can be used today, keeping in mind the existing challenges/restrictions and the current state of affairs in the schools. For instance, the hardware in public schools has been purchased over many years ago, some of it is very old and just biting dust. The challenge was, how to make a solution which is new in nature using latest technology but yet can work on primitive hardware or only needs low specification hardware to work optimally. We were able to achieve that with iScuela in Punjab, today over the 12,000+ schools that have iScuela are using every single hardware that we could find lying in the schools, whether it’s a dual core processor CPU that was purchased 10 years ago or whether it’s a low cost android pc stick. Our iScuela solution has been engineered to work on windows pc, android tv, android stick, or an android projector, covering the entire range of hardware combination a school could use. 

The second biggest thing that differentiates us from other solutions is the teacher acceptance and the willingness to use this system in their daily routine with close to 180,000 teachers and more than 86% approval rating for the system, we believe we’ve been able to make something that has been acceptable, that is usable and that is feasible. This has been achieved with over 5 years of research and development to come up with a simple yet intuitive solution which requires little or no teacher training.

We believe that we are innovative in the way we use the data points collected across our platform to draw meaningful insights that the government can use to make interventions impacting lives of students in a meaningful manner. Our gender based participation data points could point out areas of low grip child participation which could as a result be due to unavailability of washrooms or low public awareness. We are innovative in the way we connect the dots using data and go beyond just app usage to impact lives of students.

Our roadmap has these milestones we would like to achieve in the coming year and next 5 years :

a. Additional 500,000 Students engaging with our self learning platform daily and successfully Implement a pilot in Bangladesh this year.

We can achieve this as we already have close to 2.4 million students currently using our mobile platform. State government of Haryana is distributing over 500,000 new tablet PCs to students from grade 9-12. We have been selected to provide our Personalised Adaptive Learning platform in these tablets. This project will be completely implemented before end of the year.

We have an opportunity to implement a pilot in Bangladesh with our local partner. We plan to successfully execute the pilot this year.

b. Provide intelligent insights via our analytical engine by 2023

We have been collecting and analysing data points and also working to improve our machine learning model to provide deeper insights, as described in the solution query at the start of the Solve Application. As schools were shut down during the pandemic, some of the data points were not collected but from this year we would be able to collect all data points and start to deliver insights by next year.

c. iScuela reaches beyond Indian borders to another country by 2025

According to our previous experience, it takes close to 1 year to localise and build content for a particular curriculum and another 2 years for complete execution. If we get an opportunity to start a new country we will be able to develop and implement it by 2025.

d. Our model duplicated in 3 other states apart from Punjab in the next 5 years by 2027

We are currently in advanced talks with states of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, in India, to implement our solution in a similar way as done in Punjab. We hope to do at least 3 states in the next 5 years. As curriculum is similar across states we can develop multiple states in parallel.

All elements that form a part of our solution are connected to an analytical engine which is made available to the decision makers to gauge usage and performance insights of the users. For instance, Government of Punjab can view usage reports right from an individual student to a particular subject in a grade, school, district and the state. This helps them to make decisions regarding scaling, allocation of hardware. They also use these reports to encourage schools and teachers that are falling below the average  numbers. 

Some of the KPIs we measure using our analytical engine :

1. Percentage increase in school enrolment.

2. Percentage decrease in school dropout rates.

3. Number of licenses requested across the state and from individual districts.

4. Average usage in schools (in hours) across the state and in each district along a ranking table of districts and schools according to their usage of the platform.

5. Topic wise analysis to assess which topics are being liked and used and also the ones that are not living up-to the expectation or need re-work due to feedback. 

6. Remedial Content being suggested to each student.

7. Number of App downloads.

8. Number of active users (Students and Teachers) of the mobile platform.

9. Average time spent daily by students on the mobile platform.

10. Average number of visits on the app by students in a week/month.

11. Number of quizzes attempted.

12. Overall grade wise, topic wise breakup of performance of students in quizzes across the state.

13. Number of general knowledge articles students read posted on our ‘Knowledge Wall’.

14. Number of feedbacks received in a month.

15. Participation data classified based on gender, filtered for each school, area, district or entire state.

We also conduct regular surveys with teachers and district officers to gauge their view and gather feedback to further improve the content and platform. 

Finally, Indian Government conducts its study and assessment of each state on 70 parameters out of which e-learning and supplementary learning also is one. This is also a good indicator where students and teachers using our platform stand relative to other states in India.

So far we have completed 12,000+ school installations out of the total 19,272 public schools in Punjab. Currently iScuela reaches over 2.4 Million students in Punjab and Haryana via classroom labs and mobile apps running on iScuela engine, namely iScuela Learn (Punjab) and Avsar (Haryana).180,000+  public school teachers which is above 85% teachers use our mobile platforms.

We performed a study with District Education Officers (DEO) and subject matter experts in the state to understand the impact so far. An overwhelming 84.8% of respondents said that their students like this method of learning and have shown greater interest and participation in the classroom.

In the annual assessment conducted by the Government of India, Punjab was ranked number 1 (from 9th position in previous report) across the country with e-learning and supplementary learning contribution to its success and growth. This assessment was done by gauging the increase in learning levels of students across different grades and different subjects.

Our personalised adaptive learning data points indicate growth of 18.2%, 23.6% and 31.2% in performance for fast, average and slow learners, after 6 months of using our platform. (Please note : Classification of fast, average and low learner was done by taking taking a baseline test and combining that with inputs received from their teachers)

One of the most significant indicators since the inception of the project has been the increase in enrolment numbers over the last 3 years in public schools of Punjab and Haryana by 10-15% year on year. E-learning platform as a teaching tool and accessibility to high quality multimedia content has contributed to this increase, as per the Punjab Education Department.

As we primarily focus on improving learning levels of school going children, the key activities would include students consuming and interacting with learning material and attempting quizzes on our platform, with a view to understand a topic. Performing this activity students are expected to become more curious as understanding a topic better often leads to more questions and finding answers to those questions gives one a sense of accomplishment. In the short term, with increased curiosity and better understanding students become more engaged, their active participation in school increases which is directly observed with higher attendance levels. Sustained higher attendance and participation in school builds confidence, making students want more, aspire more and with the mind engaged in constructive exercises there is reduced chance of students mixing up with anti social elements.

In the long term, these students not only uplift their family but their communities. As they rise on the economic pyramid, they seek and get better opportunities and exposure.

iScuela is fast becoming one of the largest edTech platforms providing solutions to the public sector in India. Every year survey after survey showed the low learning levels in school going children specially in rural and semi urban communities. We believe technology can be a greta leveller and with iScuela we are on a mission to use technology and uplift the students in rural communities and give them an opportunity to shine and build a future for themselves.

Our platform is built as a software to be used on various computing devices in the classrooms, these include traditional PCs, Android projectors, mini PCs and more. We also provide mobile apps under the name of iScuela Learn and Avsar in states of Punjab and Haryana respectively. The personalisation of learning on these mobile variants is done using artificial intelligence whereas big data helps us produce insights that shed light on hurdles students confront which otherwise might not be addressed.

We have also been extensively using multimedia tools and platforms to create interactive, engaging content which is localised of rural communities. 

The only criteria to join our organisation is sharing our vision of making an impact in the education sector. We do not differentiate between our team members or make decisions based on who they are or where they come from, it is irrelevant for us.The only thing relevant is the passion they bring on board through their work. We have a zero tolerance policy towards racial, religious or gender discrimination within the organisation and respect all beliefs and sentiments. Currently, male to female breakup in our team stands at 57% and 43% respectively. As we are based out of India, we have team members working from 15 different states across the country. The youngest member of our team is aged 21 whereas the eldest member of our team is 45. 

Our leadership team we has two members that have technology backgrounds, one works on design, strategy and one of in execution and operation. Within our leadership team we have 3 male members and 2 female members. Amongst our team we have studied in 3 different countries and lived in 5 countries at various parts of our career. 

Going forward we would like to involve more team mates from rural communities specially in our activities that involve execution and training of our platform in rural areas. While they will start in execution and training we intend to setup up-skilling academy within our organisation where any employee could choose an area of interest within the organisation and with help of a mentor could learn and build their career path in that area of interest.

Education sector is primarily divided into two parts Private and Public sector. Edtech tools created can be used by students studying in schools coming from both public and private sector. In India the primary difference is language in which the content is delivered.

 We use to our edtech tools to generate revenue in SAAS based offering to Private schools and individual students. Where as these offerings are customised and delivered to Public sector schools/Governement at no cost. We work with social organisations and collect grants and Corporate Social Responsibility funds from organisations to cover the costs and overheads for Public schools.

The Private sector gives us the revenue to be self sustaining and profitable where as the public sector gives us immense scale to increase the impact of our work. The grants and funds received for public sector projects also help us in further research and development of our products.

Our Revenue model falls into the "Integrated" category where we look at the private sector to provide us with revenue but whether is public or private sector our offerings overlap and entire team focusses on on emission of "Increasing learning levels of school going children with the use of technology."

Going forward we would like to strengthen our private sector model along with what we do public sector and look for funding to scale the subscription service. Now that we have shown our model works public sector we also intend to work with new governments directly and sell B2G which will also significantly add to our revenues.

Grants:

For our work we are doing in the state of Punjab and the Central Government of India, we signed an agreement with Rotary India Literacy Mission for 1.27 Million USD in 2021. 

Revenue : 

For the upcoming financial year (1st April 2022- 31st March 2023) we have already closed committed revenues in elearning upwards of 1.3 Million USD.