Building Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Decision-Making at Scale through AI
Case at a Glance
Impact
100,000
children enrolled, 3000+ Trained Teachers.
Week-on-week
skill mastery achieved, Coding (54%), Science (59%), Financial Literacy (65%)
Measurable improvements
baseline to endline, Creativity (42.6%), Problem-solving (50.8%), Decision-making (43.5%)
About the organisation
The Apprentice Project (TAP) is a nonprofit organisation working to embed 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and decision-making into India’s public education system. Through TAP Buddy, TAP delivers choice-based, co-curricular learning pathways in STEM, coding, visual arts, and financial literacy for students in Grades 4–12.
Problem Statement
India’s public education system serves over 250 million children, yet 21st-century skills critical for a digital economy remain largely untaught and unmeasured. Overcrowded classrooms, exam-driven pedagogy, limited teacher training, and one-size-fits-all instruction restrict opportunities for personalised learning. As a result, skills such as creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making are neither systematically developed nor assessed at scale.
Solution
TAP developed TAP Buddy, an AI-powered WhatsApp learning platform that delivers personalised, adaptive skill development directly to students. Using multimodal AI, rubric-based evaluation, and real-time feedback, the solution enables continuous measurement and learning while strengthening teacher capacity through dashboards, guidance, and system-level insights.
Quick Facts
Organisation Name
The Apprentice Project (TAP)
Organisation Website
Visit Site
Founding Year
2017
Number of Beneficiaries served
100,000 children 2025-2026
Geography Served
Delhi, Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh
Focus Area
Programmatic Impact Capacity Development
Functions Impacted
Program Delivery / Beneficiary Services, Training & Capacity Building, Technology & Data Management
Service Provider
Developed In-house
Contact Email
prashant.k@theapprenticeproject.org
SDG Addressed
Full Case Study
Challenge
Teaching and measuring 21st-century skills at scale in public schools
Despite policy emphasis under NEP 2020, India’s public schools lack scalable mechanisms to teach and assess 21st-century skills.
Key challenges included:
- Absence of structured curricula and assessment frameworks for skills such as creativity and problem-solving
- Teachers not trained to teach or evaluate these skills consistently
- Large class sizes limiting personalised feedback
- One-size-fits-all instruction despite diverse learning levels
- Lack of real-time data on skill progression for teachers and administrators
These constraints prevented systematic skill development and limited accountability for outcomes.
Solution
An AI-powered, personalised learning system delivered through WhatsApp
TAP Buddy was designed as a low-cost, scalable AI learning platform embedded into students’ daily digital habits. The system combines conversational AI, computer vision, and predictive analytics to deliver adaptive learning and continuous assessment.
Key features of the solution include:
- Choice-based electives across STEM, Coding, Visual Arts, and Financial Literacy
- Personalised Adaptive Learning engine adjusting difficulty and pacing
- AI-based image and voice evaluation of student projects against rubrics
- LLM-driven doubt resolution for students and teachers
- Interactive micro-learning videos with in-video checks
- Behavioural nudges to improve engagement and retention
- Dashboards for teachers, schools, and governments
- Predictive alerts for disengagement and low mastery
Outcomes & Impact
Demonstrating scalable, low-cost skills learning with measurable outcomes
- User engagement 100,000 students enrolled, with 61% active usage in 2025-2026
- Skill mastery Average weekly mastery levels of 54–65% across coding, science, and financial literacy
- Skill growth Significant improvements in creativity (42.6%), problem-solving (50.8%), and decision-making (43.5%) over 6–8 months
- Cost efficiency Delivery achieved at ₹800 per child, projected to reduce to ~₹100 per child annually at scale
Technology Stack
| Name of the Tool | Where it was used | What it enabled | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| LLM-based Conversational Engine | Student and teacher interaction | Real-time doubt resolution and feedback | Commercial |
| RAG Pipelines | Content retrieval | Contextual, curriculum-aligned responses | Custom-built |
| Computer Vision (OpenCV + ResNet-50) | Project evaluation | Image-based rubric assessment and plagiarism checks | Open-source |
| FAISS | Similarity search | Submission matching and originality detection | Open-source |
| Neo4j + LlamaIndex | Curriculum mapping | Linking submissions to rubrics and learning paths | Open-source |
| Predictive Analytics Engine | Engagement tracking | Early warning for disengagement and low mastery | Custom-built |
| Behavioural Nudge System | Learner engagement | Retention through reminders and incentives | Custom-built |
| Multilingual Pipeline (Bhashini) | Language support | Indic-language learning and feedback | Open-source |
Key Project Learnings
- Personalisation Enables Scale: Adaptive learning paths allowed diverse learners to progress at their own pace, leading to measurable skill gains.
- Multimodal Assessment Makes Skills Measurable: AI-based evaluation of projects and explanations enabled continuous measurement of complex skills at scale.
- Low-Cost Design Enables Sustainability: A WhatsApp-first, reusable-content model kept per-child costs low, supporting long-term government adoption
Potential for Wider Adaption
| Sector | Adaptability of the Solution |
|---|---|
| State Education Systems | Can embed 21st-century skills into public school curricula at scale |
| CSR and NGO Programs | Adaptable for co-curricular and skills initiatives |
| Teacher Professional Development | Can support teachers in understanding and assessing skills |
Additional Details
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