CLT India’s e-Pathashale

85% of schools in India are located in rural areas and two-thirds of rural children in India reported they did not receive learning materials or activities at all during the period of the pandemic - as per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), that is conducted annually by Pratham. 

Also, the National Achievement Survey (NAS) reports, carried out every three years by the central government about the state of the education system in the country, reveal that while children are graduating to a higher class every year, very few are performing at their expected levels. 

It is a blatant fact that there is a discernible gap between the rural and urban education systems for which rural children face many difficulties. Additionally, India has a deficit of over 1 million teachers, as reported by UNESCO

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Teachers are the backbone of delivering education and quality knowledge that defines the future of our children and nation.  India has an acute shortage of teachers and special attention needs to be paid to rural areas, districts with high scheduled caste and tribe populations, and all across India's north-east, as per UNESCO. The availability and deployment of subject teachers are not well documented and monitored. The working conditions of teachers in the Northeast and "aspirational districts" are poor and there is a marked rural-urban disparity in terms of basic amenities as well as information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure. 

Another noteworthy aspect in an addendum to teacher shortage is that the majority of rural schools lack subject specialists especially Science and Mathematics teachers. STEM education quality is poor in the government schools in rural areas. Additionally, these government schools in India have no teaching or learning resources. The only tools in such schools available for teachers to teach children are a Textbook and a BlackBoard. The non-availability of low-cost digital resources in regional languages that can be accessed in no internet connectivity area is one of the biggest barriers in extending learning opportunities to the under-served communities, especially in the era of digitalization and technology advancement. 

Students from underserved communities have little to no access to educational resources, as well. Teachers also lack the subject matter expertise to teach especially in the case of STEM subjects. Factors such as the shortage of pedagogically sound resources that are affordable and designed to the curricula play a very important role in the education space. The educational resources available in the market caters to high-end private schools but there are no equivalent ventures in the education space that caters to the underserved communities with digital resources. Also, the resources available on the internet are mostly in English which poses a language barrier in understanding the content. While the internet and computers have changed how information is shared across the globe, only 16% of rural residents in India have access to the internet. In line with connectivity, power is also an important factor for children to access digital resources and electricity in remote rural areas are part of the limitations and living challenge. 

This brief contextual reference sets the background for the relevance of CLT India’s solutions to boost education for all (as per SDG 4). CLT India’s signature initiative e-Pathshale has successfully been implemented in 12000+ schools.  

CLT India’s e-Pathashale was conceptualized to address the massive challenges children face in underserved communities to complete their school education with good learning outcomes, without any access to quality schools, qualified teachers and learning resources. To solve a problem at scale, CLT India created a Hub-Spoke model titled e-Pathashale, where Master Teachers in-house designed an innovative STEM pedagogy for 5th-10th in regional languages. This pedagogy is delivered through a low-cost technology that is robust and content-rich but does not require internet connectivity to run. This comes very handy for the village teachers who have limited access to training or mobility or internet connectivity. Technology integration by CLT India was leveraged due to its strength in digitizing, replicating into regional languages, remote training and scaling. What ties CLT’s e-Pathshale program as it is titled is the data from the 4,200 village communities where schools have e-learning labs.

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CLT e-Patashale content was developed by a network of 100 teachers, Textbook Committee members, SMEs, resource people from State Board and National Curricula Framework and translators, visual artists, video editors, graphic designers etc. Our partnership with Microsoft Research helped us to vet out different technology delivery models that were appropriate and sustainable and do some impact studies on the ground.

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e-Pathshale is a 10-year journey involving R&D, proof of concept, vetting out different models, etc before the current scalable and replicable model evolved 5 years ago. Started with 5 village schools to understand what kind of content was relevant and the existing teaching practices, today we have a presence in 4200 village schools. Initially, the focus was more on pedagogy that was digital and in regional languages, but with expansion and scaling, technology delivery models evolved. (Initially, the delivery of the content was mostly via CDs, DVDs, distance education over Webex.)

An important adoption was that e-Pathashale had to factor power cuts into the solution, in addition to no internet.

As of 2021, we have 15,000 STEM videos, assessments, and real-time experiments in 4 languages, in addition to launching “Early Grade Reading” most recently. 3,000 out of 4,200 schools are where we run our program solar-powered; technology is a sim-enabled android device -i.e. a plug & play for Televisions in classrooms. CLT India also has 2 Mobile Apps on Google Playstore free of cost for teachers and students interaction. The key driver of this initiative has been collaborations with other practitioners, non-profit foundations, the corporate sector and the State Government. CLT India today offers a complete ecosystem for a sustainable e-learning solution. While CLT’s strength is as a Knowledge and Technology Partner, we take the program e-Pathshale to each school in collaboration with other partners. e-Patashale’s primary goals of access, inclusion and equity have been attained and demonstrated with evidence.

CLT India's e-Pathashale program serves children from marginalized or underserved communities. e-Pathashale also empowers educators and teachers to deliver a better learning impact for the students from remote and rural locations, which also includes girls. Our assessment of marginalized rural communities includes children and girls from weak socioeconomic conditions. The current impact of the organization covers 12,000 rural classrooms (in 4500 schools), 80,000 teachers and 2.7 million children.

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CLT e-Patashale content was developed by a network of 100 teachers, Textbook Committee members, SMEs, resource people from State Board and National Curricula Framework and translators, visual artists, video editors, graphic designers etc. Our partnership with Microsoft Research helped us to vet out different technology delivery models that were appropriate and sustainable and do some impact studies on the ground.

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e-Patashale’s primary goals of access, inclusion and equity have been attained and demonstrated with evidence. CLT India aims to expand the program pan India. CLT India is driven by the philosophy that every child – no matter their circumstances – deserves access to a rich educational environment to be able to build their aspirations and dreams. By designing interactive pedagogy for critical subjects like Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and delivering by means of a purpose-built low-cost technological platform, the team at CLT India is working towards achieving better educational outcomes for underserved and remote communities, in partnership with caring partners.

 e-Pathashale has the potential to impact 50,000 children and 500 teachers for every 100 schools it covers. 

CLT India has seasoned and active Board Members who are well connected & engaged in the education sector and are the think tank behind the e-Pathashale initiative. The Founder of the organization "Ms Bhagya Rangachar" is involved in the design and development of STEM pedagogy. 

 This governance board comprises of exemplary leadership provided by 

• Ms Bhagya Rangachar, who is the Founder of CLT India and President of the CLT International Foundation Inc, U.S.A. She served as the CEO of the institution from 1997-2021 August.

• Mr Kentaro Toyama, who is W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information as well as a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.

• Mr Bill Thies, who is a researcher at the Microsoft Research India, in the Technologies for Emerging Markets Group

• Mr Harsha Murthy, who is currently Managing  Partner of Consummate Capital that is a New York city-based investment and advisory firm that specializes in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

• Ashish Kasi, who brings 20+ years of experience in the IT industry and is currently the Vice President & GM India for Conviva. Prior to this, he  spent 10 years with Yahoo! as their head of engineering.

• Marina Kundu, comes with over 25 years of experience in the education industry and management. She has a lifelong passion for education.

Gayatri Krishna, comes from IBM as an Industry Lead for Banking and Financial Markets

e-Pathshale is a 10-year journey involving R&D, proof of concept, vetting out different models, etc before the current scalable and replicable model evolved 5 years ago. Started with 5 village schools to understand what kind of content was relevant and the existing teaching practices, today we have a presence in 4200 village schools. Initially, the focus was more on pedagogy that was digital and in regional languages, but with expansion and scaling, technology delivery models evolved. 

CLT India is currently led by Mr Nixon Joseph who is the Chief Executive Officer and comes with a distinguished career in the banking and non-profit sectors. Prior to CLT India, he served as President & Chief Operating Officer of SBI Foundation which is the “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)” unit of State Bank of India, implementing signature projects for the institution. As a banker, Mr Joseph has served operational responsibilities in the State Bank of India both in-country and internationally (e.g. as Chief Executive Officer -SBI Tokyo branch).

CLT India has in-house expertise in content creation and program deployment wherein more than 15 staff members from diverse backgrounds and with an array of skills lend muscle to e-Pathashale program. CLT India also has a pool of teachers and schools in its network as well as officials from govt. dept who lend feedback on the utility of the program. Teachers' feedback drive update of content and changes in the curriculum of e-Pathashale. Our studies on the learning outcomes of students have been encouraging and demonstrate the potential of rural students to engage in the technical sphere of careers in their futures. 

e-Pathashale is self-sustainable, as once it is instated in a govt. school, the maintenance of equipment is done by the school while the content availability is for a lifetime. Thereby there is only a start-up cost of less than USD 1500/school involved in upgrading digital infrastructure of the school. Methods and costs have been tested and tried continuously and thereby CLT India is more than ready for massive upscaling to cover the entire country in next 5 years as well as replicate the program across borders in countries like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. 

India is known to have a low digital literacy rate. Apart from that, 85% of schools in India are in rural and remote setups where information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure is either poor or non-existent. 

CLT India's e-Pathashale program has the ability to address two critical causes at one go - instating digital infrastructure in rural schools and advancing STEM education. e-Pathashale has the potential to impact 50,000 children and 500 teachers for every 100 schools it covers. CLT India leadership looks forward to MIT Solve program to fulfil 3 key objectives - 1. access global network of peers who have similar ventures and learn from them 2. explore the scope of an impact bond as part of e-Pathashale's financial model and use the offered funds from the platform for a pilot, impacting 50,000 children (50% being girls), in remote areas 3. Build a massive upscaling strategy and implementation roadmap to cover the entire country in next 3-5 years as well as explore the cross border replication of the initiative in south Asia where communities are in need of digital equity for their children's education. 

e-Pathshale is a 10-year journey involving R&D, proof of concept, vetting out different models, etc before the current scalable and replicable model evolved 5 years ago. Now for the program to be ready for massive upscaling, CLT India requires both growth strategy, partnerships mdoels and funding investments. This is what we expect to achieve from the MIT Solve program - hands on strategy with scope of piloting cross border replication and govt partnership framework to bridge the start up fund challenge. 

CLT India has also developed a student-teacher app that provided access to students and teachers for interaction and study materials. CLT India aims to have market readiness for this app across the country (30,000 downloads have already happened organically but planned scaling is aimed) 

Another aspect aimed from the forum is the re-validation of sustainability strategy for the next 5 years for CLT India and e-Pathashale. CLT India also aims capacity building of its team with latest digital interventions and incorporated latest technologies like augmented reality. 

The low-cost technology delivery model of CLT e-Patashale ensures that the solution has a built-in ecosystem and does not have dependencies on expensive or high quantum infrastructure, electricity, internet or even knowledge of IT. This comes very handy for the village teachers who have limited access to training or mobility or internet connectivity. Technology integration by CLT India was leveraged due to its strength in digitizing, replicating into regional languages, remote training and scaling. What ties CLT’s e-Pathshale program as it is titled is the data from the 4,200 village communities where schools have e-learning labs. e-Pathashale once set up has low maintenance cost, offers lifetime access to digital content and bridges the gap of lack of expertise in teaching STEM subjects.  

CLT India addresses some of the challenges in the rural school education system of India like shortage of teachers with subject expertise, student disengagement and lack of quality learning resources. e-Patashale is a low-cost digital content repository based on the national curriculum (NCERT) adopted by state board schools in India, facilitating improved learning outcomes for government-run school beneficiaries.

Refer to learning benefits of the program at https://cltindia.org/documents...

In the next one year, e-Pathashale will expand to new states in India, especially in remote districts where quality education is a challenge and the digital divide is wide. The organization is working on organic partnerships and funding methods to double its reach and impact. Alongside, in the next one year, CLT India will also review the improvements in learning outcomes of the students and feedback on teaching assistance for teachers on STEM subjects.  

CLT India aims to adopt a growth strategy for next 5 years to expand the program across India and in South Asia where English is a medium of education. e-Pathashale wants to attain its full potential of impacting 100+ million children in India within next 5 years. 

CLT India follows intensive monitoring and regular impact studies to measure the learning outcomes of the students. A regular dashboard of program outcomes is also maintained that helps in improving the pedagogy and content to suit updated needs of the schools curriculum and students learning expectations. 

CLT recognises that experiential learning is equally important to supplement the classroom learning. In addition to the CLT e-Patashale learning labs, it also conducts workshops with volunteers to develop STEM learning kits which are then distributed to government schools. So far, more than 10,000 volunteer hours have been utilised to deliver 4,000 STEM kits to schools.

Refer to e-Pathashale Impact Assessment results at eSHALA IMPACT ASSESSMENT_FINAL_17APRIL (cltindia.org)

e-Pathashale dashboard maintains the students progress on learning outcomes for boosting STEM education. Theory of change is to empower rural schools with digital assets for delivering quality education 

CLT's core is content development and we won the award for developing a read-ready practitioners kit for Early Grade Reading, which helps us scale our existing product suite.

 Licensing CLT's e-Patashale content suite through Classroom App and integrating it to Android TV delivery model helps us continuously partner with various CSR teams.

 Regular collaborations with other Foundations as Knowledge partner to provide e-Patashale content suite on their existing platforms.

Our strategy has been to build an entire ecosystem to develop relevant resources for the practitioners in their regional languages and develop low-cost mobile technology delivery models with data analytics. We have tested the Plug & Play android mini-PC device that hosts the content in multiple environments in 3,300 villages; we have tracked 750 million hours of learning in the last 3 years. We have learnt that we can influence the local practitioners to be motivated and effective with good methodologies and innovative resources for teaching, and ignite aspiration for children to want to learn more.

CLT India Leadership believes in diversity and inclusion and employs that as part of its talent and team policy. There is a conscious gender balance maintained as well as hiring policies offer equal opportunity to all. CLT India also engages in partner alliances that follow strong inclusion outlook and have people diversity. 

CLT India is currently led by Mr Nixon Joseph who is the Chief Executive Officer and comes with a distinguished career in the banking and non-profit sectors. Prior to CLT India, he served as President & Chief Operating Officer of SBI Foundation which is the “Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)” unit of State Bank of India, implementing signature projects for the institution. As a banker, Mr Joseph has served operational responsibilities in the State Bank of India both in-country and internationally (e.g. as Chief Executive Officer -SBI Tokyo branch). 

CLT India is also governed by a diverse team of board members who overlook the projects being implemented and take accountability for the results produced. This governance board comprises of exemplary leadership provided by 

• Ms Bhagya Rangachar, who is the Founder of CLT India and President of the CLT International Foundation Inc, U.S.A. She served as the CEO of the institution from 1997-2021 August.

• Mr Kentaro Toyama, who is W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information as well as a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.

• Mr Bill Thies, who is a researcher at the Microsoft Research India, in the Technologies for Emerging Markets Group

• Mr Harsha Murthy, who is currently Managing  Partner of Consummate Capital that is a New York city-based investment and advisory firm that specializes in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

• Ashish Kasi, who brings 20+ years of experience in the IT industry and is currently the Vice President & GM India for Conviva. Prior to this, he  spent 10 years with Yahoo! as their head of engineering.

• Marina Kundu, comes with over 25 years of experience in the education industry and management. She has a lifelong passion for education.

• Gayatri Krishna, comes from IBM as an Industry Lead for Banking and Financial Markets

CLT India created a Hub-Spoke model titled e-Pathashale, where Master Teachers in-house designed an innovative STEM pedagogy for 5th-10th in regional languages. This pedagogy is delivered through a low-cost technology that is robust and content-rich but does not require internet connectivity to run. This comes very handy for the village teachers who have limited access to training or mobility or internet connectivity. Technology integration by CLT India was leveraged due to its strength in digitizing, replicating into regional languages, remote training and scaling.

As of 2021, we have 15,000 STEM videos, assessments, and real-time experiments in 4 languages, in addition to launching “Early Grade Reading” most recently. 3,000 out of 4,200 schools are where we run our program solar-powered; technology is a sim-enabled android device -i.e. a plug & play for Televisions in classrooms. CLT India also has 2 Mobile Apps on Google Playstore free of cost for teachers and students interaction. The key driver of this initiative has been collaborations with other practitioners, non-profit foundations, the corporate sector and the State Government. CLT India today offers a complete ecosystem for a sustainable e-learning solution. While CLT’s strength is as a Knowledge and Technology Partner, we take the program e-Pathshale to each school in collaboration with other partners. e-Patashale’s primary goals of access, inclusion and equity have been attained and demonstrated with evidence.

A start-up capital in form of grant of <USD1500 / school enables CLT India to implement a digital infrastructure in govt schools with e-content that has lifetime access and update features. Once set up, the infrastructure is self-sustained with govt aid for govt. schools.  

Over the years, our team at CLT India has developed an expertise that we are ready to deploy across India and in other developing countries. By examining every obstacle standing in the way of achieving our goals, and finding appropriate solutions to each one, we have not only developed particular expertise but a process that is scalable and adaptable to other contexts.

Through the many iterations of our educational offerings, we are able now to do a thorough assessment and analysis of any particular context, identify the obstacles to attaining the desired goals, and partner with teachers, school administrators and other local authorities, as well as corporate sponsors to offer customized solutions. Once we have understood the context, we can offer end-to-end solutions that are sustainable within each environment because they are based on deep partnerships with local experts.

e-Pathashale program has sustainability in-built where post-implementation, the set up is part of govt school infrastructure and maintenance is part of govt spending. Most start up costs are now being fended by CSR partners and donors. However, CLT India wants to pilot "pay for success" model to scale up the efforts. 

There 5 key ways to achieve financial sustainability for CLT India: 

1. Continue working with CSR Partners focused on education for grants

2. Commercializing student-teacher app really low cost (<USD1/month) so that the technology can be maintained and upscaling it across India

3. Offering low cost online courses to students interested in STEM as after school program 

4. Developing low-cost vocational courses for rural students (especially girls and women) to empower them digitally 

5. Work technology partners for continued pro bono tech support in upgrading the digital tools.