How is Zeapl.ai Empowering English Literacy Digitally In India

The soul of India lives in its villages. — Mahatma Gandhi

Today, the surest way of exiting the poverty trap is to avail education that lends jobs. But millions of our kids either drop-out or cannot avail such education at all. It is this that accounts for majority of dropouts and hence not opting for higher education as 70% of higher education mode is in English. Employability is one of the major factors for fading of the Urban Rural divide. With the opening up of economies, employability is high; however English literacy is a critical block.

In several parts of India, especially rural areas, many school students have a common fear — reading a passage from their English textbooks aloud or even holding a conversation in English. It often rouses a feeling of uneasiness which stems from apprehension about a second language and the lack of relatability. This lack of English Literacy widens the divide between Urban and Rural India and deprives Rural India of numerous benefits.

For a large country like India, the solution has to overcome:

• Scale at Low Cost
• Strong Distribution Partner
• Last Mile Physical delivery
• Unified Delivery Platform

How did Zeapl.ai Enable the Ecosystem to Solve it

Intrigued and awakened by the disturbing fact that in Rural India only 10% of 8th Grade Students can read sentences in English, we along with Marico's Nihar Shanti Pathshala Funwala & LeapForword channelized our effort to democratize quality English Literacy for all.

• Strong Distribution partner: Our affiliation leveraged government partnership and technology to enable reach and access even in far-flung rural areas. Keeping collaboration and scalability at its core we partnered with the Government of Madhya Pradesh to deploy this initiative, which is now also being replicated in Bihar, Chhattisgarh & Jharkhand.
• Last Mile Delivery: Government school teachers acted as the strongest intermediary for the last mile delivery as it complemented the adoption of the programme and their own learning which could be replicated in the coming years.
• Unified Delivery platform: Using technology in a simple yet effective manner we automated most of the implementation processes leveraging ubiquitous apps at the frontend — WhatsApp, YouTube & Zoom platforms. Platform familiarity & low cost in delivering & tracking the content at each level made the program scale at low unit cost.

Our Platform integrated with ubiquitous tools like WhatsApp & YouTube were used to deliver the content from Leapforword.

Learning Curve

Our intervention tries to solve these bulging issues by empowering the government school teacher through a 'Digital Teacher Support System' which is a first of its kind WhatsApp based frontend. The Classroom teaching enhances by multi folds leading to better quality education.

The program started in late 2019 with a pilot in two districts of Madhya Pradesh and seeing the adoption success, this was rolled out across all 52 districts.

• Target Population: Government School Teachers who have the responsibility of Teaching English to Students of Government Schools.
• Integrated learning platform is built for personalised & vernacular end user experience.
• Centralised backend tracks individual user behaviour at different stages.
• WhatsApp enterprise is integrated at every stage of the program.

What did we incorporate post Pilot

• One to one trackable engagement: One to one trackable personalised, vernacular engagement.
• Byte sized content: Byte sized content delivery.
• Gamified Content: Gamified Content consumption with concepts divided into levels & modules.
• Assessments and certifications: Assessments happened with user inputs on WhatsApp with randomised timed quizzes.
• Soft nudges: Soft nudges to drive user engagement at low engagement phases in their journey.
• Live Chat Support: One to One teacher & student support thru live chat backed by ticket management to boost their confidence.
• YouTube live: YouTube live is integrated to drive group dynamics and trainings to maintain pace amongst teachers.
• Video Engagement: Spot quiz is integrated with YouTube/Zoom to reduce user dropouts in mid trainings.
• Video analytics: Video analytics helps track minute by minute participation.
• Data visualisation: Data visualisation tools integration for territory dash-boarding, tracking content effectiveness, tracking learning outcomes, and individual leaderboards.

Only post clearing the quiz content module can a user move onto a new module.

Transparent Visibility across Govt authorities

To achieve this, collaboratively we are undertaking the following activities:

• Teacher Training: Arguably one of the largest training projects attempted in the education sector in the country. Teachers were trained through a low-cost technology solution in a span of less than 2 years. This training was a live online training.
• Teacher Certification: Teachers who participated in the training and performed satisfactorily on the test were rendered a certificate.
• Teacher Support: Through WhatsApp enterprise solution, being one of the early movers in the education space to adopt the 1-to-1 teacher support system.
• Student 1-to-1: Through YouTube Live sessions.
• Data led monitoring: Consumption status allows us to track which teachers are going through the content, Dissemination data allows us to track which teachers are sharing the data, while quiz/assessment data allows us to track which students are accessing & learning.

Results thus Far

The initiative is aimed at positively impacting the English Literacy Levels of Students studying in primary and middle Regional Language Government Schools (2nd – 8th standard). We aim to impact over 10 lakh Teachers and 250 lakh students through this.

This was planned in 4 phases:

• Phase I: Prototype and Feedback stage: 2 districts in Year 1 (November’19 - March’20).
• Phase II: Scale & adoption: 100% districts (52) in Year 2 (April’20 - March’21).
• Phase III: Replicate at Scale: 100% coverage in 4 states in Year 3 (April’21 – March’22).
• Phase IV: Replicate across all states: Replicate across all states in regional languages too in Year 4 (April'22 - Onwards).

Before tech integration, the yearly reach of the program was to 10,000 teachers without last mile outcome tracking.

Over the last 18 months, the program was tested in a few districts of Madhya Pradesh and subsequently rolled out across the entire state. The program is now being replicated across Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh.

The program could effectively reach 144,000 teachers & through them 440,000 students. We are currently on target with covering teachers in the states of MP, Bihar, Chhattisgarh & Jharkhand. These teachers would eventually help over 1.5 million students towards English literacy.

We also won the FICCI CSR Award in education in 2021.

So what’s Next

Covering all teachers of Government schools across India, who in turn would enable millions of children to learn English. This shall help them become better employable & exit the poverty trap. They shall now:

• Get Professional education, since these courses are only available in English.
• Reduce drop outs among students and lead to a boost in income.
• Boost effective teacher skilling as well.

Our implementation has helped us see the impact of a simplified technology which is ubiquitous and scalable. We have been able to keep the end user as a central figure and drive impact on ground. This is also a stride for us towards continuous improvement as we strive to make an impact at scale.

We are committed to contribute for the vision of Digital India and help make an impact on ground. We are continuously looking to synergise with organisations and agencies who are focused on working on scalable models in social impacting areas of Education & Health.

If you would like to collaborate or know more, feel free to reach out to us at connect@zeapl.com.