New Delhi: March 14, 2023 – XSEED Education released its Annual Results Report at a warm lively high-tea ceremony at Taj City Center, Gurgaon. The report details the performance of over 61,000 students in Grades 1-8 on the 2022 XSEED Learnometer Skills Test, a national test of English, Math, and Science conducted in 21 states of India. The test is generally considered more difficult than traditional ones as it requires students to apply their knowledge rather than just recall facts and formulas. Apart from the findings, the 38-page report lays out four implications for school education. Proud XSEED employees and their families gathered to celebrate the release.

Of the encouraging findings, the most impressive was that XSEED students showed a +21% performance advantage over non-XSEED students in the challenging middle school grades (6, 7, 8). This is remarkable as middle school is when students tend to struggle with increasingly abstract and complex syllabus content. The results demonstrate that the XSEED Program’s focus on three core skill areas – Conceptual Understanding, Problem Solving, and Communication – builds a strong foundation for higher grades.

Furthermore, the longer a school had been using the XSEED program, the greater were the benefits to middle school scores.

Another finding in the report highlighted some dramatic benefits of XSEED for struggling students. Those in the bottom third of test-takers improved by an overall average of +55% in same-student scores in just one year, with middle school students showing even higher gains of an astonishing +136%.

The report went on to outline four important implications of these findings for K-8 education. First, it noted the importance of fostering independence in children. In the words of one school leader, XSEED students were already ‘independent problem solvers’ when Covid hit, which may have helped them cope with the reduced support of remote learning. Second, the report highlighted the role of language mastery in academic success. XSEED students have long had the reputation of speaking and writing well in their own words, which translated into strong results across skills and subjects. Third, XSEED students were able to avoid a large ‘middle school slump’ in academic performance, which is commonly observed not just in India but worldwide. In fact, some of the biggest gains came in middle school. Finally, there was clear evidence that an effective academic system can help students and schools overcome challenging contexts. Both struggling students and low-fee schools showed dramatic gains after 3+ years of using the XSEED program.

“For years we have had rich qualitative evidence about the superior performance of XSEED children, especially in application-based problems and in English language expression. This report now provides the quantitative underpinnings of this performance. What is remarkable is that these foundational strengths help the children stay competitive in the challenging middle-school years (grade 6, 7, 8) when the performance of most students falls off.  XSEED children will compete much better in higher grades, entrance exams, and in the job market,” said XSEED Founder Ashish Rajpal in the release address at the event. “This affirms that XSEED truly builds a  child’s foundation for life .”

The XSEED academic program is a research-based teaching and learning system that is running in schools from Nursery to Grade 8. It improves the conceptual thinking & understanding of children, strengthens English language expression, and enhances confidence. Since its international launch in 2014, XSEED has served 2 million children in over 220 districts and more than 20 states across India and has been deployed in eight countries including India, the Philippines, and the Middle East.

About XSEED

XSEED Education is a Singapore-based education system that improves thinking and problem-solving skills in children thereby making them more confident and ready for the 21st century workplace. Its flagship school program has reached two million children, upskilled and certified over 100,000 teachers in thousands of schools, and has been deployed in eight countries including India, Philippines, and the Middle East. XSEED SuperTeacher is a first-of-a-kind content loaded teaching & learning app for teachers that can be used in both physical and online classes. The World Innovation Summit in Education (WISE) & MIT’s Legatum Center have featured XSEED among path-breaking global innovators in education.

Read the full article by XSEED Founder Ashish Rajpal here: https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/opinion/getting-the-ed-right-in-edtech-1181374.html

Growth in EdTech investments is not the same as better learning outcomes. That will require technology to better understand the human learning process and solve the fundamental problems that plague it.

Global EdTech investments more than halved in 2022. Indian EdTech has not been immune: investments dropped 40%. The industry that could not hire fast enough, has laid off up to 10,000 employees in 2022. Hundreds of thousands of crores in losses have been reported. There are rumours that the “unicorns” are no longer so magical and are in financial trouble. What’s going on?

EdTech, short for education technology, comprises of products and services that deploy technology for better results in education. At least that’s the theory. For the past two decades, businesses have tried to exploit the market opportunity through several offerings, including digital classrooms (hardware), learning management systems (software), video content, adaptive learning, big data, and more recently through promises of utilising blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

While Covid was devastating for many, it proved to be a boon for many EdTech companies. Children were confined to their homes, and parents were concerned about their academic learning; they were eager to adopt an educational alternative and ways to keep the children occupied. Enter the EdTech companies. Armed with massive funding from venture and private equity firms, these companies launched a massive advertising and sales assault on parents, offering recorded or live videos, various online practice apps, and also “personalised” tutorial options. These were generally expensive, requiring a commitment of tens of thousands of rupees or even lakhs, and backed by attractive freemium and EMI deals.

As Covid ended and normalcy returned, the pressing need to engage children at home waned. Studies on the efficacy of some of these products began to emerge; concerns about screen time resurfaced, and parents became more cautious about jumping on the bandwagon. That in turn has had a cascading effect on sales, valuations, and funding. A study among parents showed extremely low levels of satisfaction with K–12 EdTech offerings. Less than a third of parents were likely to renew the product they were using, and they had a negative NPS (net promoter score that indicates the likelihood of recommending the product to others). The number one reason for dissatisfaction seems to be the product’s quality: a lack of doubt resolution, the quality of teachers, and insufficient personal attention.

John Hattie of University of Melbourne, arguably the foremost expert on measurement of learning outcomes, studied data of 80 million students from 50,000 studies from around the world. His research discovered that “teacher-related” factors have the greatest influence on students’ learning outcomes. Hattie also emphasises the significance of softer aspects such as students’ self-esteem and level of “striving” or “challenge” in the learning process. His writings refer to Edtech as the “emperor’s new clothes” with “shiny gadgetry” but no data that shows any transformative impact. Not everybody likes Dr. Hattie’s methods and manner, but his message cannot be ignored.

Technology-based educational solutions are not always doomed to fail. A large-scale study of over 61,000 school-age students in India, conducted by a Singapore-based organisation, found 31% same-student gains learning within one year post-Covid.

Education is a complex process marked by individual differences. Even before EdTech, with its promises and failures, education was grappling with many fundamental problems: the diverse distribution of talents, the uneven distribution of motivation, and the move from knowledge to learning. These are hard problems that will need many iterations. However, the desire to solve them, combined with an evidence-based approach, is critical. Funding and marketing alone will not do.

All evidence to date suggests that there is no one silver bullet. The most likely path forward is a combination of pedagogy, personalisation, and measurement (goals, outcomes, feedback). If tech can concretely address some of these fundamental issues, it’s in business. If not, we will keep discovering melting glaciers and giants with feet of clay.
Ashish Rajpal, Founder XSEED

About XSEED

XSEED Education is a Singapore based education system that improves thinking skills and problem-solving skills in children thereby making them more confident and ready for the 21stcentury workplace. Its flagship school program has reached close to two million children, upskilled, and certified over 100,000 teachers, in thousands of schools and has been deployed in eight countries including India, Philippines, and the Middle East. In 2020, XSEED launched XSEED SuperTeacher, a first-of-a-kind fully loaded teaching & learning app for teachers that can be used in both physical and online classes. The World Innovation Summit in Education (WISE) & MIT’s Legatum Center has featured XSEED among path-breaking global innovators in education.

For more information on XSEED Education please visit
www.xseededucation.com. Contact  sg@xseededucation.com