Project

Driving learning outcomes in government schools through EdTech

Dinabandhu Bharti , Doug Johnson , Ruchika Joshi , Prabhat Sharma , Syed Maqbool , Rob Sampson , Rajkumar Sharma , Sonakshi Sharma , Marc Shotland 1 October 2021

As part of this Learning Partnership, IDinsight aimed to inform Central Square Foundation’s decision about which products to bring to government schools at scale. CSF would fund these product companies to adapt their products for low-resource, rural, government schools. IDinsight also produced a public report synthesizing generalizable findings from this exploration of EdTech implementation in India.

Students listen to instructions from IDinsight Senior Field Manager, Dinabandhu Bharti, on sharing their preferences on technology in the classroom.

Decision-maker’s challenge

In 2017, Central Square Foundation (CSF), a philanthropic fund based in Delhi focused on enhancing the quality of education in India, launched the ‘EdTech Lab’ initiative (‘the Lab’) with the aim of catalyzing education technology (EdTech) to improve learning outcomes in Indian government schools. CSF needs evidence to inform which products they should bring to government schools at scale.

Impact opportunity

While there has been a steady growth in the availability of EdTech tools in India, these were primarily used in high-income (private school) environments. The Lab aimed to create a pathway for EdTech products to be taken up into the government school system by generating demand for effective solutions among policymakers. IDinsight’s work would inform CSF’s decision of which products to bring to government schools at scale. CSF would fund these product companies to ‘contextualize’ (alter to make suitable to a new context) their products for success in low-resource, rural, government school environments. IDinsight also produced a public report synthesizing generalizable findings from this exploration of EdTech implementation in India.

Our approach

IDinsight ran 12 rapid process evaluations on different EdTech products in their current environment. The evaluations were designed to be quick (~6 weeks) yet enough to give an indication of how the implementation of each product was working in its native environment. The evaluations combine stakeholder interviews, analysis of each products’ internal MIS data, and an expert panel convened to review each product.

The results

CSF used these results to inform their EdTech strategy as they worked to build a pipeline of promising, contextualized solutions to be tested and scaled in government schools. The published findings gave EdTech companies, foundations, and governments a nuanced understanding of different aspects of products and how they interact with different use cases.

Additionally, the tools created for the rapid process evaluations have been used by state governments and other foundations to evaluate EdTech products. CSF continues to build on and enhance the framework created in this project in the subsequent versions of the EdTech Lab.