No Child Left Behind: How Class Saathi is Transforming Rural Education

Transforming Education With One Click

In a classroom in rural Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state in India, a quiet girl sitting in the back row raises her hand for the first time in months. Not because the teacher called on her, but because she now holds something powerful in her palm, a small device with 8 buttons that gives her a voice. This is the promise of Class Saathi, that every child, even the shyest backbencher, can participate, can be seen, can learn. 

On August 7, 2025, India's Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary and His Excellency Lee Seong Ho, the Ambassador of South Korea to India, launched Class Saathi in the heartland of Uttar Pradesh. Through a partnership between Samsungbacked TagHive Inc. (the creators of Class Saathi), KOICA (Korea International Cooperation Agency) and Pratham Education Foundation, 50 government schools in Baghpat and Bulandshahr became the first wave in what will become a movement, reaching 1,000 schools over five years under the #EkClickShikshaKeLiye program (One Click for Education).

"The true promise of technology in education is its ability to bridge divides— geographical, linguistic, and digital," Chaudhary declared during the virtual inauguration at UPS Ahaira Composite School. "Class Saathi exemplifies this promise by bringing high-quality, data-driven, interactive learning into rural classrooms."

Teachers Face Students, Not Blackboards 

For decades, teaching in rural India, and in fact many countries in the Global South, has looked the same; teachers spending precious minutes writing questions on blackboards, their backs turned to students, while children copy mechanically into notebooks. Assessment meant unit tests administered weeks after teaching, when misconceptions had already calcified into permanent learning gaps.

Class Saathi flips this equation entirely. 

Now, teachers spend just 10 minutes on assessment, not the 60 minutes it took before. That's 50 minutes returned to actual teaching, to looking students in the eyes, to understanding who's struggling before it's too late. 

Shivika, a teacher at Composite School in Shahpur Kalan, Bulandshahr, captures the transformation: "Earlier, we could rarely conduct assessment in the classroom. Students gave unit tests only after weeks of teaching a chapter. After Class Saathi was introduced, we started checking students' understanding during the regular class itself which was very beneficial." 

The technology is deceptively simple: students hold Bluetooth clickers with A, B, C, D and E buttons, along with buttons for ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, and a ‘Raise Hand’ option. Teachers pose questions through an app that runs on any infrastructure in the classroom, interactive panels, computers connected to projectors, or just a smartphone. Students click, and instantly, the teacher's screen shows exactly who understands and who needs help. No internet required, no electricity needed, just connection. 

But the real magic isn't in the hardware. It's in what happens next. 

From Invisible to Engaged: 100% Participation 

Rishipal, a teacher at Composite School Barnawa in Baghpat, noticed something remarkable: "As we have increasingly used Class Saathi, it has allowed us to quickly understand how many students are grasping the subject matter, something that was previously difficult to ascertain in the classroom." 

The numbers tell a powerful story. In traditional classrooms, less than 50% of students actively participate. With Class Saathi, participation soars to nearly 100%. 

Why? Because shy students no longer fear giving wrong answers publicly. Because competitive students love seeing their names on the leaderboard displayed on the classroom screen. Because every child, regardless of whether they sit in front or hide in back, gets the same chance to respond.

Aarish, a student from Composite School Tilbegampur in Bulandshahr, describes it with the enthusiasm only a child can muster: "We use it again and again in different periods. It is a lot of fun to answer using the clickers and there is a lot of competition among us to answer first and correctly." 

Student attendance increased from 50% to 75% in schools using Class Saathi, children want to come to school when school is engaging. 

Data That Changes Lives 

In Madhya Pradesh's CM Rise Schools, where over 12,000 students used Class Saathi throughout 2024, something unprecedented happened. When end-of-year exams were administered across 40 schools with Class Saathi and comparison schools without it, the results were unequivocal:

• 9.6% increase in overall scores

• 7.9% increase in Mathematics

• 10.2% increase in Science

• 9.6% increase in English

• 10.6% increase in Social Studies

Not a single student in Class Saathi schools scored below 40% in any subject. The distribution shifted entirely, fewer struggling students, more achieving at higher levels. 

In Varanasi, where 200 classrooms and 8,250 students participated across four blocks, the impact was even more dramatic: learning outcomes increased threefold, with attendance jumping 25 percentage points. 

These aren't just statistics. They're Aarish raising his hand. They're Shivika spending more time teaching and less time writing on blackboards. They're principals noticing students arriving early because classroom sessions have become interactive games rather than passive lectures.

Personalized Learning Without Boundaries 

The real breakthrough isn't just that Class Saathi works offline, though in districts where only 22% of schools have internet, that's critical. It's that the AI behind the system creates personalized learning paths for each child. The platform contains over 12,00,000 curriculum-aligned questions spanning Classes 1- 10 across multiple boards and mediums of instructions. When a student struggles with fractions, the system adapts, offering more practice in that specific area. When a student excels, it challenges them with higher-level problems. 94% of teachers report their classrooms have become more engaging. 97% say previously shy students now participate actively. 100% say planning assessments has become easier.

But perhaps the most telling metric is this: 80% of teachers find the technology engaging themselves, they're not just using it because they must, but because it transforms their ability to teach. 

No Child Left Behind - For Real This Time 

"No child will be left behind now," says TagHive CEO Pankaj Agarwal. "Even the quietest backbenchers can now participate in the classroom." 

This isn't aspirational rhetoric. In the preliminary findings from Pratham's assessment in Baghpat and Bulandshahr, students who took at least two quizzes monthly showed their Math and Science scores climb from 44.1% to 50.4%, a 14.4% improvement in just three months. 

Teachers describe a fundamental shift: assessment moved from being "infrequent and examination-linked to being integrated into regular class time." Students no longer fear tests, they welcome them as opportunities to show what they know and discover what they need to learn. 

One principal from CM Rise Barkhedi observed: "The biggest change we've seen is that students have started attending more, and it helps teachers guide them better." 

Another, from CM Rise Kundam, noted something deeper: "Students don't memorize during Clicker tests, teachers are more interested to teach, and students learn better because they also see no partiality." 

There's profound equity in a system where every student gets the same chance to respond, where the teacher's dashboard shows performance data without bias, where improvement is tracked click by click.

The Vision: 1,000 Schools, 50,000 Students 

The initial deployment in Baghpat and Bulandshahr reaches 2,500 students across 50 schools. The five-year roadmap is ambitious: 1,000 schools across Uttar Pradesh, transforming education for tens of thousands of children in communities where female literacy hovers around 56-60%, where post-COVID learning loss created gaps spanning multiple grade levels, where teacher shortages leave science and math classes understaffed. 

The partnership between TagHive and Pratham brings together cutting-edge EdTech with decades of grassroots education expertise. Pratham's Shubhendu Chakravorty emphasizes context: "We see our role as leveraging our experience and understanding of working with local communities and an outcome-based approach to ensure that such innovations are contextualised and integrated meaningfully into the teaching-learning journey." 

This isn't about dropping technology into classrooms and hoping for the best. It's about teacher training, community engagement, continuous assessment, and adaptation. It's about understanding that a clicker is just plastic and circuits, the transformation comes from empowering teachers with real-time data and students with real-time voice. 

Beyond Uttar Pradesh 

Class Saathi has already reached over 500,000 students across 15,000 classrooms in 10 countries. UNICEF inducted it into the inaugural Learning Cabinet cohort, validating its evidence base and scalability. 

The vision extends far beyond Baghpat and Bulandshahr, beyond even Uttar Pradesh's 1,000-school goal. Wherever children learn in under-resourced environments without reliable internet, without electricity, without the privilege of private tutoring; Class Saathi offers a bridge. 

At approximately $5 per student per year, it's not a luxury intervention. It's a scalable solution designed precisely for the contexts where learning gaps are widest.

A Quiet Revolution 

Education revolutions rarely announce themselves with fanfare. They happen in moments: a shy girl clicking button C for the first time. A teacher seeing instantly that seven students need reteaching before moving forward. A principal watching attendance climb because children want to be in class. 

The transformation from teachers facing blackboards to teachers facing students might seem subtle. But it represents a profound shift, from education as information transfer to education as human connection, powered by technology that makes every child visible, every learning gap addressable, every classroom a space of engagement rather than passive reception. 

In rural Uttar Pradesh, where educational challenges can feel insurmountable, Class Saathi offers something more powerful than technology: hope. Hope that no child needs to remain invisible in the back row. Hope that teachers can teach rather than just test. Hope that data can illuminate rather than intimidate. 

One click at a time, that hope is becoming reality. 

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Learn more about Class Saathi's journey and impact at the UNICEF Learning Cabinet, where EdTech providers can share their experiences and evidence in transforming education for the world's most vulnerable learners.