Prachi Jain Windlass, Steering Council member, Bharat EdTech Initiative and Senior Director, India, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation spoke to India CSR’s Rusen Kumar about Bharat EdTech Initiative’s vision and journey so far. Excerpts:
What is Bharat EdTech Initiative’s vision and why is it relevant in today’s time and age?
Bharat EdTech Initiative (BEI) aims to enable at-home EdTech access to enhance learning outcomes for one million students by 2025. By addressing multiple barriers like awareness, access, and engagement, BEI is striving to bridge the learning gap through effective, equitable EdTech access, especially for students from low-income households.
The EdTech industry has witnessed exponential growth in the last few years. The Indian EdTech industry is estimated to have received $16.1B in VC funding in 2020 alone. This is a 32x increase from 500M received in 2010. And, in the next decade, the market size is expected to grow to $30 billion.
During the lockdown, EdTech growth certainly created various positive changes in terms of children’s digital literacy, parent-teacher direct connection, and evolution of solutions. But it has not been accessible to all children. Education technology has had a limited impact on children from underprivileged families for a variety of reasons EdTech subscriptions are expensive: VC-backed companies in the education space raised more than $20 billion last year, up from around $14.6 billion in 2020 (Crunchbase data). In 2020, more than 90% of these funds were directed towards players catering to higher-income segments with INR 30-40k annual subscription costs.
Lack of information: Students and parents have limited information to choose between the multitude of EdTech solutions available in the market.
Besides issues of EdTech access, students have also struggled with learning losses. An Azim Premji University study, Jan 2021, of over 16,000 children across five States in Classes II to VI found that 92% of children had lost at least one specific language ability from the previous year, and 82% had lost at least one mathematical ability.
These setbacks have pushed students several months behind in their academics. Especially, students from low-income households. And, BEI is on a mission to support them to bridge these learning losses with very clear objectives. First, to improve student learning outcomes through EdTech at home. Second, build evidence and share knowledge with CSR for the purpose of supporting EdTech-based solutions in order to achieve large-scale impact. Third, enable EdTech companies to directly cater to and effectively serve this target segment.
How are partner organisations supporting BEI to achieve this vision? Also, how many partners are there?
Bharat EdTech initiative is a collaboration of 36 partner organisations across NGOs, philanthropy, EdTech companies, and research and evaluation agencies. We believe the key to scaling impact lies in partnering with the right individuals and organizations. Our non-profit and EdTech partners, for example, work in sync to further this mission. The nonprofit partners have access to and connect with communities across India. EdTech partners have the potential to empower students in those same communities with the right education solutions.
Additionally, an integrated management and execution system oversees this nationwide initiative, which is steered by four main organizations -Sattva Consulting is the lead program management partner of the initiative. The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and The British Asian Trust are the lead donors. GiveIndia leads fund-raising and fund management. We also have an Advisory Council with members from diverse industries with extensive experience in the nonprofit, education, and EdTech space offering advice in an individual capacity. The council includes Akshay Saxena, Co-Founder, Avanti Fellows; Imran Jafar, Managing Partner, Gaja Capital; Ramesh Srinivasan, Senior Partner, Mckinsey and Safeena Hussain, Founder and CEO, Educate Girls.
How is BEI ensuring equitable and effective access to digital learning for students? How many students are benefitting?
BEI is leveraging proven EdTech solutions to ensure that underprivileged students have access to online learning anytime and anywhere they want. Through these curated EdTech solutions, we are leveraging at-home learning time for these students.
A key feature of the BEI initiative is to ensure continuous engagement of students resulting in improvement of learning outcomes. This is achieved by 1:1 calls with students and parents, in-person sessions, community activities, IVR WhatsApp messages, motivational videos, and online groups.
Currently, 120,000 students are learning online on our partners’ EdTech platforms in a language of their choice – Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Telugu, and Urdu. These students are from the age group of 9-17 years, studying in grades 1-12th and hail from low-income communities in urban and rural Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Bihar, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Of the students onboarded, 46% of them are girls.
Students will be returning to school this year after a 2-year gap. What can be done to bridge the learning losses?
Millions of students were affected by school closures due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Now, as they head back to school, students and teachers need all the support to cover that learning loss. At the same time, regular engagements for students and offering them tools like EdTech platforms to complement school education is critical to ensure that students are able to learn anytime and anywhere they want, without interruption. BEI is working to offer supplementary support to students so the learning loss of the past two years can be bridged as painlessly as possible.
How does BEI ensure that they have access to quality learning material and devices to learn on?
With the support of our EdTech and nonprofit partners, we are able to ensure that students enrolling with Bharat EdTech Initiative have access to vernacular, curriculum-relevant solutions and motivational and hand-holding support to continue using these solutions.
Through consistent in-person and online engagement, our non-profit partners ensure that students and parents have answers to the challenges they face while learning.
Given the large digital divide in India, BEI is also running a pilot to study the effect of dedicated learning devices on student engagement. The pilot is currently underway with 160 students, who have each been provided with a Lenovo tablet. We are closely monitoring how student engagement and outcomes improve with dedicated devices.
How does BEI ensure that the online learning aligns with the student’s learning capabilities and supports the student to grow that learning potential?
Bharat EdTech Initiative recognises that all students are at different learning levels, even those in the same class. We are committed to providing all students with an engaging learning experience by ensuring students aren’t being forced to learn or engage with content that they do not comprehend. And so, we ensure that students begin learning online only after they have completed their baseline assessments which give us a sense of their learning levels. This information is used to create a personalized learning plan for them.
To keep them engaged while they are learning, BEI offers students digital nudges to stay engaged in the learning journey. Our partners also set up weekly interactions with parents and students to address issues faced by students and design the best study plans for them. These measures ensure learning is customised, consistent and engaging.
Once students are back to school, how will BEI’s efforts complement school learning to help improve learning outcomes?
As schools reopen in April 2022, educators and parents are concerned about accelerating learning because of the losses over the last two years. Our mission at BEI is to empower parents and teachers to become key influencers for students and support them in their learning journey. With EdTech solutions, we aim to support and enhance classroom learning for students and improve overall learning outcomes.
About The Author: Author is the editor, India CSR
