For decades, India’s biggest education challenge has not been enrolment, infrastructure, or even teacher attendance, but what actually happens inside a classroom. In Andhra Pradesh, an initiative called Academic Formative Assessment, a digital tool rolled out by the government, is trying to bridge this critical gap in education and learning delivery.
Last week, the state rolled out this digital tool across nearly 8,000 government high schools. The programme covers Classes 6 to 12, impacting roughly four lakh students per class cohort.
“Over the last 15-20 years, governments have built strong monitoring systems for attendance of teachers and students, and ensured essentials like mid-day meals,” said Praveen Prakash, former IAS officer of the 1994 Andhra Pradesh cadre. “But the core issue, how students are being taught, remained largely unaddressed.”
That gap, Prakash believes, has finally begun to close in Andhra Pradesh, following the launch of a technology-driven academic monitoring system last week, one that tracks learning outcomes daily, not annually.
The initiative is backed by Nara Lokesh, Andhra Pradesh’s Minister for Information Technology, Electronics and Communications, whom Prakash described as the driving force behind the project.
Unlike earlier models that relied on half-yearly and annual exams, this system measures learning every single day.
“Earlier, we had only two checkpoints in a year to judge academic quality,” Prakash said. “That is an inefficient tool if your goal is to improve learning.”
Expanding on how the system works, he said that under the new model, the entire academic calendar, day-wise and subject-wise, has been standardised for all government schools in Andhra Pradesh. Each 35-minute period follows a fixed structure: 25 minutes of classroom teaching, delivered in a mix of English and Telugu, followed by a two-to-three-minute standardised video lecture on the same topic, produced by the Andhra Pradesh Education Department.
At the end of each teaching session, a six-question test based on the day’s lesson is conducted, which the students answer using personalised handheld clickers, similar to those used in television quiz shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati, Prakash noted.
The results are uploaded instantly. What makes the system unprecedented is its real-time visibility.
“The minister at the Secretariat level can see daily learning data for every student,” Prakash explained. “This ensures that classes are actually conducted, students attend them, and corrective action is taken early for those who are struggling.”
Within two to three months, the data is expected to generate personalised remedial learning plans for individual students, targeting specific gaps rather than applying blanket solutions.
“This creates a consistent and personalised learning system, something government schools have never had at this scale,” he said.
Outlining the path ahead, Prakash, who served as Principal Secretary of School Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh, and earlier as Joint Secretary in the Union Ministry of Education, talked about the newly launched mobile application, installed on parents’ phones, which uses artificial intelligence to analyse student performance and generate customised reading and practice assignments in real time.
If a Class 9 student struggles with foundational concepts from Class 7, the system automatically flags it.
“The AI tool sends messages to parents, advising them about specific subject weaknesses of their children,” Prakash said. “It tells them exactly where attention is needed.”
The application has been developed with Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) as the principal technology partner, supported by several secondary collaborators.