IndiaExamPrep -Lightweight Free app for Grades 6-10 in India

“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth,” said the Greek philosopher, Diogenes. 

Education in India is mandatory for all children from ages six to fourteen and is provided free of charge at Government schools. Inspite of significant efforts in expanding access to education, enrolment rates across states in India are not consistent. 

There are at least millions of students in India who lack access to high-quality education that could help them, and our society, grow. Finding this vast educational divide alarmed me, especially since these children are perfectly capable. 

One of my firm beliefs is that all children deserve not merely the right to education, but the right to good education. 

There are 265 million students in India under Grade 10 and around 25% of them drop out before Grade 10. 

According to Government research, the dropout rate is 4% in primary years (grades I-IV) and upper primary years (grades VI-VIII). Dropout rate dramatically increases in secondary years (grades IX-X).

Our goal is to address this problem of dropout rate by providing tools and methods to improve interest and passion in education among Government School children and also build habits of hard work. On further research, I found that there is a dire need for robust preparation material for these disadvantaged and under-served school children to have a fair shot at exams.  

Grades 6 to 8 are pivotal to learning fundamental concepts. Children who don’t perform well in school during these years,  tend to display a genuine lack of interest in their academics and could lead them to eventually dropping out of school. I found that free apps like Khan Academy do not cater to the Indian syllabi completely & commercial apps like Byju are too expensive for this segment. 

Therefore, I designed & coded ‘IndiaExamPrep’, a free lightweight, self-learning application using topic-wise open-source questions, answers & explanations to prepare for exams. To develop the App, with support from a mentor, I learnt Java, APIs & Machine Learning algorithms that enabled multi-language support.  

This app covers Math and Science Chapter wise questions from Grade 6 to 10 categorized into Central Board and other State boards such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. My solution supports Multi-language capability across 5 languages. 

1. My solution serves students (grades 6 to 10) from disadvantaged and under-served schools in India studying in English, Kannada, Tamil, Hindi and Telugu languages from the CBSE, Andhra Pradesh State, Karnataka State and Tamil Nadu state board curricula. 
2. Bangalore is considered the ‘Silicon Valley’ of India, but it is home to over 2-million underprivileged slum dwellers. While meeting children in the LR Nagar slum, I was saddened to find that eighth-grade students struggled to solve basic addition problems. When speaking to a ninth grade student, I noticed that she was struggling to construct five-word sentences in English. When the pandemic hit and schools shut down, I realized that these children would fall further behind since most of their schools are unable to conduct online teaching. 
3. Free apps like Khan Academy do not cater to the Indian syllabi completely & commercial apps like Byju are too expensive. 
4. I hope to increase underserved students' ability to understand concepts, prepare them for grade level skills, test their knowledge through the app, and reduce the dropout rate in schools thereby contributing to the UN Sustainable development goal of “Reducing Inequalities” 

1. I am a 11th grade student in Bangalore and I built this app along with my younger brother under the mentorship of Mr Prasad and with support from my parents. 
2. I have been working with children near my community through my NGO - LifeBeyondSchool during the pandemic for the last two years and have a good understanding of the children’s areas of interest in academics.
3. I believe that some students want to just get by to pass exams while others who want to excel. Some students want to learn by guessing, eliminating options and testing their luck. 

   
   

   1. Those who want to pass the exams with minimal understanding can go through practice tests, True/False questions to get minimal understanding and do well in the exams. 
   2. Those who want to excel can go through the chapter wise tests, read the explanations and take tests multiple times till they cover all the randomized questions.
   3. Students can learn through Multiple choice questions by eliminating options , guessing the choice and then learning by reading the explanations. 
4. I have applied Firebase ML API to translate the questions and answers at run time to 4 other languages - Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. 
5. I am looking to apply ML to get several open source questions and answers easily into my app across other subjects.
6. I wrote a Python program for promoting the app through WhatsApp and email. I was able to download phone numbers, email Ids of various school Headmasters from the Internet. I was able to promote this application by sending it to Headmasters of schools and other teachers through WhatsApp / Email using a Python program I built.

Non Monetary:

• I have a lot of ideas, but looking for mentorship and guidance from experienced professionals in the field of middle and high school education on improving the solution and scaling the solution.  
• Looking for connections to build partnerships to improve the adoption of the app, get feedback and improve the app further.

Monetary Support:

• Looking for funding support to apply advanced Machine Learning to take open source content and convert into the application. Proof read the Questions and answers that are converted using ML models and Google Translate API. Need for funding is 10,000 USD 
• I am looking to organize a timed test and select the top  1000 students across India who qualify the 8th grade and 9th grade test from marginalized communities and give a 7,500 INR Cash prize. Need for funding is ~ 7.5 M INR (100,000 USD)  

1. It is completely free. There are no ads. 

2. It is light-weight that works in low connectivity and loads questions and answers quickly. This is super critical in developing economies like India 

3. It is carefully designed for the target audience with varying goals:

   1. Those who want to pass the exams with minimal understanding can go through practice tests and True/False questions to get minimal understanding and do well in the exams. 

   2. Those who want to excel can go through the chapter wise tests, read the explanations and take tests multiple times till they cover all the randomized questions.

   3. Students can learn through multiple choice questions by eliminating options , guessing the choice and then learning by reading the explanations.

2022 Goal :

• Looking to grow the app to  atleast 10,000 Users  by continuing to improve the quality of questions and answers, linking open source videos to each topics and building partnerships with various government officials and not-for-profits to create visibility. 
• Launch a Talent Search Test and reward economically needy students through fundraising from the industry. 

5 year Goal:

• Cover various other state boards, expand the coverage to grade 11 and 12 

  
  

  • Make my app a household name like Byjus is today.

I use Firebase Dashboard to track the total number of users, average engagement time, no. of engaged sessions per user and distribution of users across Indian states.

1. Grades 6 to 8 are pivotal to learning fundamental concepts. Children who don’t perform well in school during these years,  tend to display a genuine lack of interest in their academics and could lead them to eventually dropping out of school. I found that free apps like Khan Academy do not cater to the Indian syllabi completely & commercial apps like Byju’s are too expensive for this segment. I hope that with the usage of this IndiaExamPrep app on a large scale, the dropout rates in school will decrease slightly. 

2. The fact that the app has 2400 users with over 1 hour average engagement per user is an indication that the app is making a small difference in my community. 

3. I have received feedback from a few school teachers, students and also saw positive feedback on Google Play store with 4.3 average rating across 25 reviews. 

4.  I believe that students who feel confident of taking the exams based on the preparation are less likely to drop out of school. I was overjoyed when 11th grader Mohan called to say he used the app to prepare and ace a competitive IIIT exam in Andhra Pradesh.

1. App is developed using Java, XML and Json files. App is hosted on Google Play store. 

2. Json files containing metadata (chapter names, subjects, Questions, answers) are stored on a file server hosted on Hostinger Platform. 

3. Used Firebase for analytics and Google Translate API. 

4. I have written a python program for promoting the app through WhatsApp and email. I was able to download phone numbers of various school Headmasters from the Internet. I was able to promote this application by sending it to Headmasters of schools and other teachers through WhatsApp using a Python program I built. I have collated numerous mail ids of ministers, Headmasters and school teachers. I intend to use the Python program to send mass mails during my spring break holidays in April. 

I intend to promote this app to marginalized children across India though it is available for anyone to download freely on Google Play store.  I am happy to report that many of the heavy users of my app are girl students. I expect the usage to increase among marginalized children and girls. 

There is no revenue stream attached as of now. As of now the app is promoted as Ad-free and doesn’t require registration of mobile number or email id to use the app. The application is built to provide free and easy access to education to marginalized communities.  Costs of running the servers and ongoing maintenance will be supported through fundraising.

Cost of the hosting infrastructure is quite small (<50 USD) and funded by my parents. I intend to raise funds to help in a few additional focus areas 

1. Proof read the Questions and answers that are translated using Google Translate API to make sure that language is accurate. 

2. I have recently completed an Exam with timing for students across india to take the test. I am looking to organize a timed test and select the top  1,000 students across India who qualify the 8th grade and 9th grade test from marginalized communities and give 7,500 INR Cash prize. That needs a fund of ~ 7.5 M INR (100,000 USD)

Costs were low and there were no challenges for financial sustainability.