NIPUN Lakshya App: a real-time tool for assessing foundational literacy and numeracy

The problem

Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state, with 1.3 lakh (130,000) primary schools, 4.5 lakh (450,000) teachers, and over 1 crore (10 million) students. The state's 2022 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found that in Grade 3, 76% of students were unable to read Grade 2-level text, and 84% lacked proficiency in basic subtraction.

In 2019, the state launched Mission Prerna, India's first dedicated Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) mission, followed by the adoption of the national NIPUN Bharat Mission in 2021. Teachers received structured teaching materials, training, and mentoring support. However, they lacked a reliable and scalable way to assess whether their efforts were translating into improved learning outcomes.

Teachers relied on annual third-party assessments, which provided only a snapshot of student ability and offered little insight into day-to-day progress. Creating daily practice assessments manually was time-consuming and inconsistent. Measuring oral reading fluency, a core component of the NIPUN framework, was particularly difficult to do accurately by hand, especially across the diverse local dialects spoken across the state. Without real-time feedback, teachers had no way to identify learning gaps early or adjust their teaching accordingly.

The solution

The NIPUN Lakshya App was launched by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in September 2022 to give teachers a real-time tool for assessing foundational literacy and numeracy.

The app uses Google Read Along's speech recognition model, fine-tuned on a dataset of Uttar Pradesh dialects, to assess oral reading fluency. This fine-tuning reduced the word recognition error rate from 38% to 1%, ensuring accurate assessments regardless of a student's regional background. The app also uses ODK technology for data collection to assess arithmetic ability and reading comprehension, giving teachers a complete picture of each student's progress against FLN benchmarks.

Assessment results feed into a statewide dashboard, allowing teachers, mentors, and policymakers to monitor student learning in real time.

The rollout followed a phased approach. From October 2022, the app was piloted with 5,000 mentors, a cadre of experienced teachers who conduct monthly school visits to provide training and support. This pilot phase focused on usability, data integration with existing student records covering over 60 lakh (6 million) students, and server capacity. An eightfold expansion of the server infrastructure was undertaken to prepare for statewide use.

The app was refined based on mentor feedback. A playful mascot and voice-overs were added to make the experience more engaging for students. The number of steps required to navigate the app was reduced. Assessment history for individual students was integrated to enable teachers to track progress over time.

In April 2023, the app was launched to all 4.5 lakh primary school teachers across the state, supported by extensive training sessions, communication materials translated into local languages, and a dedicated technical support function through the state's Vidya Samiksha Kendra (integrated command and control centre for education), where teachers could report issues and receive real-time solutions.

The impact

1. 90% of teachers actively using the app within six months of the statewide launch

By September 2023, approximately 90% of Uttar Pradesh's 450,000 primary school teachers were actively using the NIPUN Lakshya App, alongside 100% of mentors. The app crash rate was less than 1%.

3. The proportion of schools meeting proficiency targets grew from 4% to 49%

The percentage of schools classified as "NIPUN" (where 80% of students in each grade are proficient in grade-level competencies) increased from 4% in 2022-23 to 49% in 2025-26, as measured by third-party assessments. In absolute terms, the number of NIPUN schools grew from 4,400 to over 51,800.

5. Large-scale independent assessment enabled

The app enabled trainee teachers (D.El.Ed students) to independently assess 2 million students across 68,000 schools within a three-week window, with more than 16,000 schools identified as meeting NIPUN standards.

7. High confidence and accountability among staff

A user survey conducted in April 2024 with 42,000 teachers and 300 officials found that 96% of teachers felt confident about making their schools NIPUN, and 98% of officials said the app had increased teacher accountability for learning outcomes.

Lessons learned

• Fine-tuning AI for local context makes the difference between useful and unusable. The speech recognition model needed to work accurately across Uttar Pradesh's diverse dialects. Reducing the word recognition error rate from 38% to 1% through dialect-specific training was what made the tool reliable enough for teachers to trust and adopt.
• A phased rollout builds quality before scale. Piloting with 5,000 mentors before launching to 450,000 teachers allowed the team to refine usability, test server capacity, and integrate student data. Expanding server infrastructure eightfold during this phase prevented disruption at scale.
• Adoption requires investment in communication and support. The statewide launch was accompanied by training sessions, translated materials, and a dedicated technical helpdesk. Without this support infrastructure, the app's adoption rate would likely have been significantly lower.
• Real-time data shifts the conversation from inputs to outcomes. Before the app, the focus was on whether teachers had received materials and training. With real-time assessment data visible to teachers, mentors, and policymakers, the conversation shifted to whether students were actually learning.
• Connectivity remains a constraint. The app's arithmetic and comprehension assessments work offline, but Google Read Along's oral reading fluency assessment requires internet connectivity. In areas with poor connectivity, this limited the overall user experience and remains an ongoing challenge.

Launch year: 2022

The app was developed within the framework of India's National Education Policy 2020 and the national NIPUN Bharat Mission, launched by the Government of India in 2021, which set the goal of achieving universal foundational literacy and numeracy for all school-going children by 2026-27. Uttar Pradesh adopted an accelerated target of achieving this goal by 2025-26.