Why is PAL for Government School Students Important?

We are all familiar with the data from ASER reports and the recent 2023-24 school infrastructure statistics, along with the trends they reveal regarding learning outcomes. Over the years of working with last-mile learners and government schools, the trends we’ve observed have consistently been concerning.

The 2023 ASER report had mentioned that:

• For students in the age group 14-18 years old, 25% of them still cannot read Class II level text fluently. And this statistics is for their regional language. The moment you want to check proficiency in English medium, the number almost doubles to 42.7%. These are the students who are unable to read sentences in English.
• A student in Class III or IV is expected to solve division problems where a 3 digit number is divided by a single digit number. But as per the same report, only about 43.3% students in the age group 14-18 years are able to solve such problems.

For the last 8.5 years, we have been tracking this sector and these trends have been consistent with no or very little deviation.

The silver lining however is the focus of our National Education Policy to reverse this situation

In the year 2017, we were into one year of running our organization. During this time, we were invited to be part of a think tank set up by the Ministry of Human Resources & Development (MHRD), Government of India, to deliberate on the then-existing ICT Policy. The policy largely focussed on the hardware with not much mention of the learning content. While we had spoken a lot about why the Government should consider introducing tablets, chromebooks and note books inside the classroom, we were also very vocal about Local Language content and for Personalised Adaptive Learning. You may listen to our presentation here

Even though the hardware suggestions were included in the updated ICT Policy, it took COVID to shake things up and make us see the harsh reality of the learning gaps in our students.

To give some context for those still trying to understand the challenge of learning gaps: the biggest issue is students dropping out of school after grade 8. As more students leave school early, India ends up with a large number of unskilled individuals. In the long run, this leads to unemployment and the situation can also be linked to many social problems arising out of crime.

So the question now, can it be addressed? Of course it can be. But how?

I believe the answer lies in Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL) solution

But our traditional school infrastructure does not allow for personalised learning inside the classrooms or at home. You cannot term coaching institutes also as personalised learning, simply because it is not. Even if a tutor is handling 10 or 5 students at a time, in a limited time of 30 mins to an hour that they have, they cannot facilitate personalized learning for everyone in the group. Similarly, in our school classrooms, during a 30 to 45-minute lecture, teachers simply don’t have enough time to understand each child’s learning pattern and then guide accordingly.

This challenge becomes even more urgent in light of the Government of India’s recent revocation of the No Detention Policy. The need to enable students to cover up the learning gaps has only gotten more immediate. Because if we do not address it now, the school dropouts will start happening even at lower grades, putting more pressure on an already existing problem.

And hence, it is imperative that we start looking at delivering personalised adaptive learning through digital means. An app that can understand the current learning level of students for every chapter or topic and guides them to cover up these gaps in a personalized way. It then enables them to achieve grade-level educational outcomes.

Some state governments like AP and Haryana were the first ones to take cognisance of this and release RFPs to deliver PAL to their government school students. The state of Haryana has an ambitious e-Adhigam project running where about 5 Lakh students of Class 9 to 12 have been given individual tablets with PAL app installed.

In recent times, EdTech Tulna was also set up under a joint initiative by IIT Bombay, Central Square Foundation and Ministry of Education to create a benchmark for digital learning solutions. Their guidelines around PAL are very thorough and will definitely help the ecosystem in setting up better and evolved systems around the design and implementation of PAL with the students.

While these trends are encouraging, one word of caution for the ecosystem. Because PAL is delivered on student devices such as tablets or mobile or Chromebook / Notebook, it is also important that teachers are included in this journey. They cannot feel isolated or not required. All of the intelligence and data which these PAL apps generate for the students should circle back to the teachers only. And teachers should be trained on utilising such data to understand their students better, save more time in the classroom and deliver better academic results.

We will conclude by saying that the journey to bridge the learning gaps in government school students requires a paradigm shift in how education is delivered. Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL) offers a scalable and effective solution to address these challenges, ensuring that each student receives the tailored support they need to achieve grade-level proficiency. With the backing of forward-thinking policies, state-level initiatives, and benchmark-setting efforts like EdTech Tulna, the ecosystem is slowly aligning towards this goal. By enabling PAL for government school students, we can not only improve learning outcomes but also empower students with the skills and knowledge to succeed, thereby building a more skilled, employable, and socially stable generation for the future of India.

PS: We have also been building for the future. I would request you to read the following section if you would like to understand about our journey of building a PAL solution. 

Our Journey with PAL:

Long before the idea of PAL had even emerged, we were still keen to address this challenge. When we were designing the first version of our LMS, we created a very simple option for the students to switch grades and hence easily access the content of any junior or even senior grade.

About our PAL LMS

Our iPrep LMS offers features in both offline and online modes. If you’re a student struggling with a concept in your grade, you can simply click a button to switch to a different grade and learn the foundational concept before returning to your original grade. Unlike most EdTech companies that charge separately for each grade’s content, we introduced an umbrella subscription for our app. With this, a single subscription gives you access to content for all grades. Switch between grades effortlessly and learn at your own pace!

But as Covid stuck, we also saw how this problem is going to get even bigger. The idea of PAL had emerged by then and we also started working on building the right solution. While we were doing it, we were very conscious of the ground challenges and we wanted to solve for those.

Overcoming Challenges to Build an Inclusive PAL Solution

• The first challenge was access to the internet. Therefore, we had to make an offline first application. Even though Covid did fast track internet adoption, it is still a long way to go. 
• Second, there are multiple types of devices which schools or students may have. It could be an Android smart phone, a tablet, a Windows laptop or a desktop. We therefore made our PAL solution compatible with all types of hardware and OS.
• Third, regionalised e-content, thus we build the solution in both Hindi and English medium. And the user can switch languages anytime they wish to. We are working on adding content in more local languages.
• Fourth is adaptive learning for all subjects. While most PAL solutions focus on the core subjects of Mathematics and Languages, we decided to offer PAL across all subjects and even grades. iPrep PAL therefore delivers personalised learning for students of Grades 1st to 12th and for all subjects. For 11th and 12th, we have introduced PAL for all three streams – Science, Humanities and Commerce and cover all the key subjects within these. 

Apart from this, 

We are also working to solve certain complex use cases where server set up is used and schools or organizations want to host the entire content on the server itself.

Lastly, as we mentioned, teachers will continue to be an important part of the ecosystem. Therefore, it is crucial to empower them with data and insights about their students. Hence, iPrep PAL records all usage and learning data and periodically syncs it to a teacher’s app called iPrep Coach or to an online reporting dashboard where they can login and check student reports.

We see this as just the first version of iPrep PAL, and we’re excited about the potential enhancements we can bring to the product and the growth opportunities it can unlock for India.

If this aligns with your vision, we’d be happy to arrange a demo of our PAL app for you. To schedule a demo, you may contact us at +91 7678265039. You can also share your details here or write to us at [email protected]

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