Who you work with#
Project SparkL is a Bengaluru trust, registered in 2022, that teaches foundational reading and arithmetic to children from vulnerable backgrounds, including children living in shelter homes. It runs after-school evening sessions at seven centres for about 130 to 140 children, with two partner organisations.
The situation#
The children SparkL works with are enrolled in a school grade that does not match what they can actually do. A child may be registered in Grade 6 and be unable to read a Grade 2 sentence.
SparkL already handles this properly. It assesses each child in Kannada, Maths and English across grade levels, works out a “skill grade”, and builds a learning plan from that rather than from the school grade. This is the core of their method and it works.
What is going wrong#
The method is manual, so it stops at seven centres. Assessing each child, working out the skill grade, planning the teaching and tracking progress all depend on a small number of people doing it by hand.
SparkL wants to reach more children. Right now growth means hiring proportionally, which is the definition of a model that will not scale.
Why it is not fixed yet#
Off-the-shelf learning apps assume the child’s grade is their level, which is precisely the assumption that fails here. Adaptive learning products assume a smartphone per child, reliable internet and a literate parent nearby. None of those hold in a shelter home in the evening.
There is also a harder problem. Assessing a child in three languages, including Kannada, without a trained adult listening to them read, is genuinely difficult.
Skills and Expertise#
- Branch — CS, IT.
- Technical skills — Offline-first application design, speech or audio processing for reading assessment, adaptive logic, multilingual and Indic-script interfaces, data privacy.
- Other skills — Working with educators, assessment design, writing for children, understanding a method before automating it.