TagHive Inc.

Students in Government run public schools and affordable private schools in India are routinely behind grade proficiency levels. Teachers and administrators have no insight into each student's progress specially considering the scale, and thus are unable to take timely corrective action, leading to student dropouts and further increasing learning gaps.

According to the latest report by the Ministry of Education, India, the prescribed student-teacher ratio by the Right to Education Act, 2009 is 30:1 for the Primary level and 35:1 for the Upper Primary level; yet Government schools in many states exceed that number significantly.

Research also correlates student achievement to the number of students per teacher, with lower numbers significantly showing an increase in learning outcomes. With India’s high population and the recommended student-teacher ratio at under 15:1, low student-teacher engagement can lead to wider learning gaps that are also exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and eventually, dropouts.

Additionally, the burden of administrative tasks and a lack of accountability and transparency at scale in the education ecosystem makes it more challenging to serve the students with highest need.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has, on an average, resulted in a 92% loss in language ability and 82% loss in mathematical ability across grades.

Without any focused intervention, this will result in a large number of student dropouts, and a major disadvantage for students who have not been supported to bridge this learning gap. We believe that what cannot be measured cannot be managed, and our solution is designed to bring data driven decision making in the education ecosystem without any hassles for all stakeholders.

Class Saathi empowers all stakeholders in the education ecosystem to increase learning outcomes and bridge learning gaps by enabling individualized student engagement within the classroom, adaptive learning outside the classroom, and easy to use data to drive strategy and support for teachers, administrators and parents.

It is a combination of a clicker device for each student and a mobile application for teachers, parents and administrators. After teaching a concept in a class, the teacher can ask a few questions using Class Saathi to gauge the understanding level of each and every student. The administrators and the parents can also see the learning data on their respective apps. Currently, the Class Saathi app currently has over 25,000 questions on Maths & Science for students of Class 6 to Class 10 in English and Hindi, and is based on the CBSE curriculum.

It also has the ability to work with any grade/curriculum/language and subject, depending on requirements from governments, partners, or organizations. Over 6.6 million questions have been solved on Class Saathi as of June 7, 2022.

Class Saathi is aligned with the Indian National Education Policy 2020's objectives of micro-learning and continuous assessments. Our “Data First” approach ensures greater accountability at all levels. Class Saathi does not require schools to upgrade their infrastructure ("no internet" and "no electricity" are no more the limiting factors in making classrooms smart).

There are over 250 million students going to school in India, among which 130 million go to Government run public schools; and 80 million go to affordable private schools. Both these segments are often starved of basic resources, which number around 200 million students, a vast majority.

These schools typically suffer from teacher shortages and basic infrastructural deficits. According to a Central Government database called UDISE, only about 22% of schools have internet access, or any technological intervention. This means that teachers are still burdened by administrative tasks and don't have a satisfactory understanding of individual student progress, to create customized strategies. Additionally, a large number of Government run public schools and affordable private schools cater to students from low socio-economic backgrounds, where enrolment is low, dropouts are high; and teachers are extremely overwhelmed.

Class Saathi focuses on these underserved children, and is an integrated solution that empowers teachers to teach better, administrators to understand learning outcomes of large groups of schools more, and students to learn from content that adapts to their learning levels; thus bringing transparency, accountability and visibility into the ecosystem.

From our partners and team on ground, we are consistently collecting feedback and conducting need analyses to build functions to empower the ecosystem even further; and building a two way dialogue to prototype our developments before wide rollout.

We will also be engaging a third party impact assessment partner to further push our learning in our upcoming scale deployment in one of the largest states in India, Uttar Pradesh.

This includes building a detailed dashboard and mechanism that not only systematically captures learning data and trends (including data split by gender to understand girl student progress, a high risk group); but also data on mid-day meals and school facilities from students. Furthermore, we are also collecting feedback on Class Saathi from parents, School Management Committees (SMCs), and village/region head (called 'Sarpanch').

Finally, the Class Saathi team is based out of South Korea and India, and consists of members spanning countries, cultures, disciplines and areas of expertise. Since our team consists of both technology experts at the cutting edge and seasoned educators, teachers and social impact professionals; Class Saathi is uniquely positioned to solve for challenges with all perspectives accounted for.

At Class Saathi, we believe that every child is deserving of a quality education, and that the ecosystem should be empowered to provide them with access to such education.

Through our easy to integrate solution, we want to enable teachers, administrators and parents to understand student learning gaps and thus create data driven strategy for personalized learning, which is also built into our AI powered app that functions as a learning platform at home.

Class Saathi is primarily designed around gathering evidence to drive strategy and allow for assessment informed instruction. We believe that we are at a Level 4 on the Nesta's Standard of Evidence model and want to now create a standard set of manuals and processes based on our scaled implementations in different contexts across India.

Class Saathi was piloted with 20 Government schools in Uttar Pradesh in India during January 2019-March 2019, where in just 30 days, there was a 10% increase in attendance and 8% increase in learning outcomes, which was evaluated by a third party. We were also invited by the Madhya Pradesh State Government to pilot the solution in 13 schools from November 2019-February 2020.

This report and change in outcomes for students has been independently assessed, and post pilot, the Uttar Pradesh Government has requested us to bring the solution to 200 schools in the Varanasi District, which is being funded by the Ford Foundation. This implementation will also be independently assessed by a third party partner.

Through the following data, we are measuring our impact, with additional layers based on socio-economic factors:

For Students

1. Student attendance

2. Student response time

3. Student learning outcome shifts

4. Student retention/dropouts

5. Student feedback on platform usage

6. Students completing primary/secondary education

7. Student proficiency levels at each grade

For Parents

1. Parent engagement frequency

2. Parent engagement feedback on platform features and visibility

For Teachers

1. Teacher usage of features

2. Teacher feedback on platform usage on frontend and backend

3. Teacher and parent engagement frequency and feedback on conversations

For Administrators

1. Administrator usage

2. Administrator feedback on platform

Low cost AI powered learning platform to improve learning outcomes of students in under-resourced (no internet, no electricity) schools.

Class Saathi's theory of change is dependent on complete integration with the current ecosystem. While it is designed to not disrupt the current operations, building data driven strategy orientation in under-resourced schools with teachers and administrators working with scarce resources is challenging, specially considering the extremely varied socioeconomic contexts across India.

We have also designed a comprehensive Deployment Kit that will help teachers integrate the solution with the help of guides, videos, lesson plans and engagement activities. This is in addition to orientation sessions and refresher sessions for all teachers and administrators across levels.

However, through LEAP Fellows, we want to:

1. Build a body of research to understand barriers to adoption and integration

2. Collect evidence and research on needs analysis across contexts to build a viable solution for all

As an output to the LEAP Sprint, we would like to see a strategy document, white paper or research paper detailing either/both of the points above, which would help us build a solution that's most need based.

Hosting the LEAP Project would also help us build a network to multiply impact and incorporate even more perspectives to build a stronger organization and solution.