Ed-tech in vernacular languages is helping bridge India’s deepest classroom divides
India cherishes the classroom as a leveller, yet equality often collapses at the chalkboard—particularly at the language of instruction. Overcrowded rooms, rigid syllabi, and English-first materials have long widened the education gap. Now, adaptive learning platforms delivered in Indian languages are reshaping this landscape. These tools personalise pace and progression, crucially speaking the language children think in. This is not flashy ed-tech—it’s equity in practice, one learner, one pathway, one vernacular interface at a time, reported timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
The scale of the challenge is immense. ASER 2024 showed that only 23.4% of Standard III students in rural India could read a Standard II text—an improvement from 16.3% in 2022, but still alarmingly low. Arithmetic gains were similar: 33.7% of Standard III could solve basic subtraction, while only 30.7% of Standard V could manage division. Yet, government-school students improved faster than private-school peers between 2022 and 2024—an outcome linked to targeted remediation and mother-tongue-based adaptive learning tools.
What makes adaptive learning unique is its feedback-driven design. Unlike static video libraries, it adjusts difficulty and teaching methods in real time, ensuring each student gets personalised support. Evaluations of Mindspark in Delhi and Jaipur showed gains equivalent to three to four additional months of schooling in a year, especially for weaker students—the clearest measure of equity.
Adaptive platforms in Indian languages are helping government-school children recover faster, narrowing the equity gap in education
States are scaling such models. Andhra Pradesh’s Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL) programme offers Telugu and English support through tablets and WhatsApp chatbots. Karnataka has partnered with Khan Academy to reach 19 lakh students in Kannada and other languages, while Maharashtra is integrating adaptive platforms with its Balbharati portal. Rajasthan’s Mindspark pilots in Hindi-medium schools proved that even resource-thin environments could benefit.
The multilingual backbone matters. DIKSHA now hosts resources in 36 Indian languages, making large-scale integration easier. Enablers like Nadu-Nedu (infrastructure upgrades), Vidya Samiksha Kendras (data dashboards), and Balbharati/e-Balbharati (state content portals) complement the engines of adaptive learning, ensuring reach and sustainability.
Access, though imperfect, is improving. ASER 2024 reports 90% of rural youth aged 14–16 live in smartphone households, and 82% can use one. WhatsApp-based PAL in Andhra Pradesh and QR-linked textbooks via DIKSHA reduce barriers for low-bandwidth users. Importantly, adaptive platforms have been shown to be cost-effective, delivering significant gains at lower per-pupil costs than teacher-hour interventions.
Looking ahead, success will be measured by the share of government-school students using adaptive tools in their home languages, foundational learning improvements, teacher adoption of platform dashboards, and equity indicators across gender and device access. The story of India’s education equity may well be written in its own languages, one adaptive lesson at a time.
