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India has made significant advancements in expanding access to primary education nationwide. Nevertheless, delivering high-quality teaching and content in classrooms continues to be a challenge. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released in 2019, 70 percent of third-grade students are still not meeting grade-level expectations, while 57 percent of ninth graders are unable to solve basic division problems. Alarmingly, nearly half of all students drop out of school before reaching the tenth grade.
The EdIndia Foundation, a nonprofit organization in India, aims to develop innovative solutions that enhance the quality of education on a large scale. Their research revealed that students aged 8–11 taught by high-performing educators significantly outperformed their peers instructed by lower-performing teachers—by as much as 53 percentile points by the age of 11. This highlighted the critical role of teacher quality in influencing student learning outcomes. EdIndia recognized an opportunity to tackle this issue using Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Scaling Capacity with AWS
EdIndia created a program designed to enhance the capabilities of in-service teachers regarding pedagogy and subject matter, allowing them to effectively deliver engaging content to their students. Central to this initiative is EdIndia’s app, Pragyan. Through AWS, EdIndia delivered video lessons, practice exercises, and comprehensive lesson plans to help teachers improve their subject matter knowledge and instructional skills. Utilizing AWS to host this application enabled EdIndia to reach a vast number of teachers much more efficiently than traditional, in-person training methods would allow. By setting up virtual classrooms equipped with smart TVs, the Pragyan app facilitated simple content sharing and provided detailed lesson plans during lessons. On its launch day, EdIndia successfully onboarded 50,000 teachers onto its platform via the Pragyan app hosted on AWS. The initiative included a weekly online forum and monthly interactive sessions, connecting close to 200,000 teachers simultaneously. AWS Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) were employed to ensure optimal app performance and availability during peak traffic periods.
EdIndia stored its video content and educational materials on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and used Amazon Route53 for reliably routing users to the application. They monitored performance through Amazon CloudWatch, which included setting up alarms to notify them of application status changes.
Transforming Ideas into Impact
Since Pragyan’s inception in 2019, it has been implemented across five states in India in collaboration with various state and municipal governments. “With our infrastructure on AWS, we can scale our resources as quickly as our ideas,” stated Mia Kapoor, director of EdIndia Foundation.
With targeted interventions made possible by AWS, EdIndia has significantly enhanced teacher performance in three key areas: general pedagogy, subject-specific pedagogy, and tech integration. The program has positively impacted over 5 million students and empowered more than 200,000 teachers across 53,000 schools.
An ongoing impact study indicates that in districts such as Jaipur and Sawai Madhopur, the program has resulted in grade-level improvements in learning outcomes across all focus areas. Remarkably, over 90 percent of students who were initially at a Level 1 learning status advanced to Level 2 or higher.
Looking Ahead
Building on its success in enhancing in-service teacher capabilities, EdIndia recently launched a new initiative called “Teachable,” aimed at equipping pre-service teachers and fostering supportive environments. EdIndia has engaged in discussions with AWS’s nonprofit team to integrate technology into this new program. Plans include creating a job portal specifically for teachers utilizing AWS. Additionally, EdIndia is exploring the implementation of chatbots on AWS to provide scalable support for student and teacher inquiries.
Recognizing the significance of data in informing educational policy decisions, EdIndia has amassed over 200 million data points during its operation. They intend to leverage this data to aid policymakers in analyzing trends related to student performance, attendance, graduation rates, and other vital factors. For further insights on gender topics and education, check out this Career Contessa blog post.
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