Gray Matters India (GMI) targets impoverished families with children enrolled in low cost private schools in India. Low income families prefer to send their children to low cost private schools rather than public schools. Many low cost private schools do not implement consistent assessments or evaluations. GMI assesses low cost private schools in India to determine students' reading, arithmetic, and English language skills. GMI's mission is to transform the quality of school education through data-driven school assessment and evidence-based analytics. GMI uses a three pronged approach to address service providers, schools, and students on behalf of parents who otherwise will not receive this information. GMI assesses how well teachers speak and teach English in their classrooms. GMI also places emphasis on parent satisfaction surveys, school leader interviews, and infrastructure audits. These assessment technique leads to an automated rating of gold, silver, or bronze performance. GMIs school report translates to model action plans for schools. Action plans encompass five to six priority items for schools to address, then GMI returns to the school every two months to monitor and reevaluate progress. In the future, GMI plans to use more data and accountability within their action plans to encourage growth. As GMI is a private institution, schools must pay to have this service. GMI also does impact assessment for education service providers and aims to implement a direct-to-parent model. Parents can also request GMI's assessments for their children's schools; however, parents then must pay for assessments as well. GMI tries to incentivize parents to pay for their services through scholarships. Currently, school and student assessment do not go hand-in-hand.
Gray Matters India is pursuing an app to efficiently assess school, teacher, and student performance in low cost private schools in India. They also plan to implement their assessment tools throughout all low cost private schools in India. They are investigating opportunities to advertise assessment results directly to parents of students.
Gray Matters India plans to assess low cost private schools' improvement in learning outcomes through their tools.