Team NIPUN Maharashtra - Government Co-ordination & Planning for Next Phase
VOPA’s NIPUN MH team maintained close coordination with SCERTM and Maharashtra state education commissioner regarding extension and planning of NIPUN MH next phase. Team also supported DIET and Education officers of Pune, Satara and Ratnagiri district with previous year’s assessment data for further audit, analysis and policy insights. District level data analysis was also shared with Ahilyanagar and Dhule districts. For preparations for next phase of 2026, team developed NIPUN MH handbook and brochure. Regular FLN updates were published through 13 notifiications on the app. NIPUN MH team continued revision of assessment tools of Language as well as numeracy as per new NIPUN Lakshyas.
Strengthening NIPUN Maharashtra’s Digital Infrastructure
The team continued to strengthen the NIPUN platform, data systems, and AI capabilities this month. More than 70,000 schools were covered through the processing of NIC student data, with nearly 3.7 million Class 1–5 Marathi and Urdu student records converted into an app-ready format.
Several improvements were made across the NIPUN mobile and web applications, including teacher assessments, the parent interface, Oral Reading Fluency (ORF), educational games, and chatbot integration. Work also progressed on Keycloak authentication, assessment architecture, QA and API testing, and the finalisation of the SCERTM assessment flow. The educational games platform was upgraded with a new admin panel and integrated into both apps, with an Android-first, Marathi-oriented UI/UX framework defined for Classes 1–5 games.
The analytics chatbot also became significantly faster. Queries using district-level data that earlier took 60–70 seconds now return in under one second. Improvements to query handling and data validation have further strengthened its reliability.
The team also advanced AI-based speech recognition and audio analysis. An AI4Bharat IndicConformer speech recognition (ASR) training pipeline was built and optimised, with model training moved to a new GPU server. Experiments are ongoing with data augmentation, learning-rate tuning, gradient clipping, duration bucketing, and text preprocessing. An event-driven, Kafka-based audio anomaly detection pipeline was developed and load-tested on a constrained 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM machine.
Data annotation of student uploaded FLN assessments continued at scale, reaching 11,200 reading samples annotated and 10,300 reviewed and approved cumulatively. In August, the team annotated 5,997 samples, approved 7,918, and cross-checked 815 model-predicted anomaly samples for validation.
V-School Digital Learning Project - IMPACT REPORT
The V-School Digital Learning Project, supported by Bajaj Finserv, was implemented from August 2023 to July 2026. Over the three-year project period, baseline, midline, and endline assessments were conducted to measure improvements in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), academic learning outcomes, and digital penetration and usage.
At the end of the three-year implementation period, the assessment findings were consolidated to undertake an overall baseline–midline–endline impact analysis, capturing the project's progress and outcomes over time. Based on this analysis, a comprehensive three-year impact report was prepared.
For Detailed Report : DLP Impact Report
VOPA Team Celebrating 80th Independence Day Celebration
MYCA : Teachers’ Mental Health Initiative
The Teachers' Mental Health Project, supported by NOCIL, progressed with an interim report drafted for the funder and continued engagement through a WhatsApp community of over 350 teachers. The MYCA app continued to serve students daily through notifications, activities, and educational wallpapers
SAIYAM 2.0 - Project Renewal for 2026-2027
SAIYAM - addiction prevention programme will be implemented across nearly 300 schools in Pune city in academic year 2026-27, in partnership with Tarachand Ramnath Seva Trust. The team engaged with SCERTM, DIET, Pune and nodal authority of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan to strengthen collaboration and approval letters for next academic year. Team also discussed next phase planning including shortlisting of schools with PMC Pune and shared previous year’s learnings. 67 schools which participated in SAIYAM Olympiad in the year 202-2026, will continue to be part of SAIYAM 2.0. VOPA's dedicated SAIYAM Program team revised learning modules as well as updated content on digital platform
VOPA 8th Foundation Day Celebration
VOPA was founded on 24 August 2018. But the story behind VOPA began much earlier. From a young age, Prafulla, Founder and Director of VOPA, noticed the social problems around him and questioned why things were the way they were. The sensitivity to understand social problems, question why certain sections of society were left behind, and find ways to make things better gradually became a part of his journey.
Much of human progress has come from that very sense of uneasiness, the feeling that something is not right and the question, “Can I do something to change this?” In many ways, the work in social impact began long before VOPA had a name.
Over the years, VOPA evolved through ideas, time and people.
This year, VOPA completed eight years. Today, its work reaches millions students across all 36 districts of Maharashtra. VOPA provides digital infrastructure support to NIPUN Maharashtra Mission that enables real-time, AI-based and evidence-backed Foundational Literacy and Numeracy assessments of students in Marathi-medium government and aided schools.
Building and sustaining a system of this scale is not easy. It requires passion, not just hard work. It requires the belief that knowledge and skills can be used to create something that serves society. Today, VOPA has a team of more than 50 people. What connects us across different roles and backgrounds is this shared desire to create meaningful change. We share not only VOPA's vision, but the values that shape how we approach our work.
As VOPA grows, passing these values from one generation of employees to the next becomes increasingly important. For the eighth Foundation Day, we therefore chose to celebrate by going back to that story. In the week leading up to 24 August, the team held five candid conversations with Prafulla Sir, Our founder & Director. We spent time asking questions and listening to stories from his life and VOPA's journey. These were not formal presentations, but conversations about experiences, challenges and the decisions that shaped VOPA. They offered an immersive view of how VOPA was built, the values it stands for, and where it hopes to go in the future. On Foundation Day, the team came together to celebrate eight years of VOPA, shared memories, laughed over stories, and took part in games and activities.
As VOPA enters its ninth year, the most important part of the journey remains the same: our values, attitude, behaviour and most importantly PASSION !!
