To prepare for the future, investing in human capital is key, and early childhood education (ECE) can offer the highest returns. Betting on this, non-profits across India are decentralising education using technology and innovation.
Indian children born today will enter the workforce as young adults by 2047. By that time, India will have largely won the battle for universal school enrolment. The challenge that beckons next is universal school learning—imparting high-quality education that creates opportunity for all and provides the human capital needed for a developed India by 2047.
Economics Nobel Laureate James Heckman’s work on human capital emphasises the high return on investment in early childhood education. Early interventions enhance cognitive and non-cognitive skills critical to long-term success. The well-known Heckman Curve shows that, across all stages of education, the highest economic returns come from the earliest investments in children.
To raise the collective intelligence of the nation, there is a strong case for investing heavily in ECE by increasing its share of the Samagra Shiksha budget to 5% (up from around 2% currently).
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### Leveraging Technology to Scale Quality Education
The ubiquity of smartphones in India today offers a never-before-seen opportunity to rapidly scale high-quality educational inputs to children across the country, regardless of their socio-economic status. A recent survey reported smartphone ownership of 1.5 per household in urban India and 1.3 in rural India.
This simple idea holds great power, and educational non-profits have begun work precisely on this front, with efforts that are only set to expand.
For instance, Rocket Learning, a non-profit launched in 2020, has developed interactive and highly engaging educational content delivered over WhatsApp to teachers, parents, and children. Every day, micro-WhatsApp groups send low-income teachers and parents contextualised content in the local language. This content can be used for play-based activities with children in classrooms or at home.
These activities take less than 20 minutes and involve readily available materials. Research shows that greater parental involvement in children’s education leads to improved academic performance. Rocket Learning reinforces this sense of participation by encouraging parents and educators to share images and videos back to the WhatsApp groups, creating a shared learning community.
Chimple is another example—an Android app developed in India that uses games to instil foundational literacy and numeracy through a teacher-directed, at-home learning model. Using the app, teachers can remotely assign content for children to practise based on the week’s teaching plan.
In a pilot study involving Class 1 and 2 students in Haryana, the treatment group saw a 50% improvement in test scores over the year with just 10 minutes of daily Chimple usage. Similar improvements were recorded in English, with low-performing learners benefiting even more.
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### The Emerging Role of Generative AI in Education
As students advance to higher grades, new learning opportunities can be reinforced by generative AI, a powerful tool for Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL).
Conventional classrooms often offer rigid, one-size-fits-all approaches. PAL, however, allows students to learn at their own pace and in their own space, making engaging, immersive, and interactive learning accessible, even in the remotest locales.
Children from elite backgrounds have an edge due to access to individual high-quality coaches who quickly resolve their problems. PAL can universalise such access.
Educational non-profit Central Square Foundation (CSF) is working with Khan Academy to contextualise Khanmigo—India’s AI-powered personal tutor designed for low-income contexts. State governments are beginning to integrate PAL into their school systems. Andhra Pradesh, for example, has pioneered PAL as part of its World Bank-aided Supporting Andhra’s Learning Transformation (SALT) programme.
The use of PAL to bridge educational divides will only grow in the future.
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### Broad AI Applications Beyond PAL
PAL is not the only AI use case in education. AI can generate learning content itself—scripts, rhymes, worksheets, and illustrations created using large language models (LLMs) save time and boost creativity.
AI can translate and dub across languages, simplify animation, and personalise audio with voice cloning. It can also drive data analysis by using incoming messages to draw nuanced insights into the effectiveness of specific educational programmes.
CSF has partnered to build an AI-powered Teacher Coach for government school teachers that provides actionable feedback and identifies effective levers for measurable improvement in classroom practice.
AI tools also reduce teachers’ workloads by grading large volumes of student work rapidly—what once took five minutes can now be done in 20 seconds. They provide nuanced understanding of student performance and actionable insights, enabling teachers to engage more students effectively.
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### Ensuring Quality and Inclusiveness in EdTech
India’s EdTech sector is already large and bound to grow further. But it is critical to identify which solutions are relevant, useful, and able to evolve from serving the privileged few to becoming universally enabling.
To evaluate the many available EdTech options, CSF has developed, jointly with IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, an evaluation index that helps governments and other users make quality-led, evidence-informed choices regarding EdTech procurement—especially for schools serving low-income students.
This index, called **EdTech Tulna**, defines quality standards for good EdTech. It creates exhaustive toolkits and training for decision-makers to apply these standards when evaluating EdTech products and publishes product reviews to drive demand and shape supply.
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### Governance and Regulatory Innovations to Elevate Education Quality
Beyond EdTech innovations, governance and regulatory reforms can dramatically uplift quality.
Currently, school regulation is heavily input-focused. The priority must shift towards measuring educational outcomes, which should be reported transparently, publicly, and regularly.
Such transparent data allows parents to choose the best schools for their children and “vote with their feet,” creating pressure to improve quality. It also allows the best schools to emerge as exemplars, whose best practices can be replicated elsewhere.
Countries such as the UK (Office for Standards in Education – Ofsted), Dubai (Knowledge and Human Development Authority – KHDA), and Chile (Sistema de Medición de la Calidad de la Educación – SIMCE) have successfully implemented such transparency models to improve school quality.
India’s National Education Policy (NEP 2020) proposes the creation of a **State School Standards Authority (SSSA)** to set standards and publicise each school’s level based on these standards.
For SSSAs to be effective, they must operate independently of education departments and other government bodies, impartially assessing quality in all schools—public or private. NEP 2020 recommends shifting school regulation from being overly restrictive (especially on private schools) to a “light but tight” approach.
SSSAs should regularly report school quality and make this data publicly accessible.
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### Towards a Brighter Educational Future
Every child in India deserves the chance to reach their full potential. With new technologies and enabling reforms, India is well on its way to fulfilling that dream.
*The writer is founder-CEO of The Convergence Foundation and founder chairperson of Central Square Foundation.*
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