Monthly Highlight Report - September
VOPA’s September 2026 report highlights | Joining the ShikshaNext Accelerator | Benchmarking VOPA Indic Marathi speech recognition model against OpenAI and Gemini | Securing SCERTM approval for the Addiction Prevention project | Presenting NIPUN MH data to the Office of the Principal Accountant General
VOPA Joins the ShikshaNext EdTech Accelerator
In September, VOPA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the ShikshaNext EdTech Accelerator, an initiative of ShikshaNext dedicated to powering learning through educational technology and artificial intelligence. The Accelerator is supported by its founding strategic partners, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Reliance Foundation and the Gates Foundation, with Anthropic as a supporting partner and Central Square Foundation as its managing partner. This program supports VOPA’s parent engagement and home learning game features of NIPUN MH platform, extending learning beyond classrooms through dedicated parent login, home learning notifications and learning outcome based games.
As part of collaboration and peer learning within the wider Accelerator network, the team also participated in an interaction with Chimple, an organisation working in gamified learning. Organised by Central Square Foundation, the session offered knowledge sharing & insights into Chimple’s experience in designing educational games
NIPUN Maharashtra Project : Government engagement and implementation readiness
VOPA worked closely with the State Council of Educational Research and Training, Maharashtra (SCERTM) to design learning levels and assessment tools and to set up cloud storage for assessment data. VOPA is also coordinating with Room to Read and Khan Academy to make their learning content available to teachers and parents through the NIPUN Maharashtra (NM) SCERTM App. NIPUN assessment data of PMC schools for the year 2025-2026 was shared with the Pune Municipal Corporation at its request, fulfilling VOPA’s role of providing FLN assessment data and insights to government bodies.
On 17 September, the Office of the Principal Accountant General (A&E)-I invited VOPA to present its role in the NIPUN Maharashtra Abhiyan in greater detail. Dr. Snehal Waghmare (IAAS) and the audit team sought to understand how foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) is measured across Maharashtra.
VOPA Indic Marathi : VOPA’s Marathi speech recognition model
VOPA’s Marathi speech recognition model which analyses students’ oral reading fluency during assessments, fined tuned and optimised on AI4Bharat IndicConformer speech recognition (ASR), was benchmarked against nine other models, including those developed by Google (Gemini), OpenAI, Sarvam and Qwen. On a test set of 249 Marathi audio samples, VOPA’s model ranked first, recording the lowest character and word error rates of all ten models evaluated. This will further increase the accuracy of ORF assessments.
Saiyam project received SCERTM approval
Saiyam, VOPA’s addiction prevention program implemented in partnership with Tarachand Ramnath Seva Trust (TRST), received approval from SCERT Maharashtra in September for implementation across 300 government schools in Pune, with an expected reach of nearly 30,000 schoolchildren. This marks an important milestone towards large-scale ground implementation.
The program also launched its revamped digital platform, saiyamolympiad.com, featuring a simplified registration process and a new coordinator login to help school coordinators support Saiyam mentors.
On the ground, the team visited schools to review implementation and provide on-site support, met headmasters from 88 schools to introduce the program and understand school-level needs, and conducted project orientation meetings. The team also revised content for two of the six modules. The first module, Addiction and Us, was demonstrated in 13 schools, with feedback incorporated into the updated content.
Supporting Children Beyond the Classroom
VisionSpring conducted eye-check camps for schoolchildren in Pune, with VOPA closely coordinating the initiative across 44 schools. This program benefitted 8000+ students and 1300+ students received spectacles. Building on its established relationships with over 200 schools in Pune, VOPA facilitated access and coordination to ensure that students could benefit from these screenings. VOPA believes children’s learning outcomes are closely linked to their overall health and well-being.
Addiction Prevention Awareness through Ganapati Festival
VOPA created awareness on addiction prevention in schools using informative banners during Ganapati Festival. In collaboration with Tarachand Ramnath Seva Trust and Dagdusheth Halwai Trust, 240 awareness banners were displayed across 80 schools.
MYCA App & Teachers’ Mental Health Project
The Teachers’ Mental Health Project, supported by NOCIL, continued to engage teachers through the MYCA app, which delivered 120 notifications, 12 activities and banners, and six educational wallpapers during the month. Active users rose by 11.8% compared with the previous month, and 201 new users joined the app in September.
VOPA Team Workshop: Aligning Efforts Towards Project NIPUN MH
On 5 September, VOPA organised a one-day workshop for team members working on Project NIPUN Maharashtra (NIPUN MH). The workshop aimed to deepen the team’s understanding of the project and to strengthen coordination across teams ahead of the coming year. As key outcomes, the teams finalised their inter-team workflows and agreed on communication channels for coordination. VOPA plans to hold further workshops to build on this progress.
