Asha Computer Education
ஆஷா வழி கணினி கல்வி
ஆஷா வழி கணினி கல்வி or Asha Computer Education (ACE) was a scalable initiative to take Asha’s way of teaching computer science and our curriculum to all the students in Tamilnadu. This was started as a pilot in Oct 2023. 52 schools from Thiruvallur district started in Oct 2023. Another 53 schools from four districts joined them in August 2024. Even as 18 of them dropped out, another 42 schools joined in June 2025.
The purpose of this pilot was to demonstrate that a Computer Science curriculum can be successfully delivered by the government teachers themselves if provided the right kind of support. The first two batches completed the first year curriculum (Digital Literacy) by April/May 2025 and in April 2026, first year curriculum was completed by 65 schools and the second year curriculum (Programming) was also completed by 60 schools.
Where available the infrastructure at the schools was used for teaching. If the school doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure, we provided laptops to the school. This is in addition to one laptop we provided to each teacher. At the end of the academic year, like all our other programs, the children worked on a detailed project for 8 to 10 weeks. The best projects were featured in an ACE Impressions event.
The purpose of this pilot was to demonstrate that a Computer Science curriculum can be successfully delivered by the government teachers themselves if provided the right kind of support. The first two batches completed the first year curriculum (Digital Literacy) by April/May 2025 and in April 2026, first year curriculum was completed by 65 schools and the second year curriculum (Programming) was also completed by 60 schools.
This was entirely funded by Amazon under their Amazon Future Engineer program.
ACE
At a Glance
130+
Schools
Across Tamil Nadu
130+
Teachers
Trained to implement a good CS Curriculum
5000+
Students
Reached in 2025-26
100
Percent of schools
That completed the program!
95
Percent of students
That completed the assessments and projects
1000
Unique projects
That met the minimum quality submitted by the students in 2025-26 across DL and programming.
ACE
Curriculum and Pedagogy
Two year CS curriculum that is described in the CS Curriculum section was used for this program. Each lesson involved the children doing something on the computers. The children learnt by doing things on the computers and not just writing something down in their notebooks.
The first year of the curriculum will focus on Digital Literacy and making the children comfortable in computers and second year of the curriculum will teach them programming. The programming part was taught two ways. About 25 schools were taught using the CSF-Express course from Code.org. Another 35 schools were taught using our own curriculum. Each year will have 30 lessons which should be completed by January. Then the children will work in teams on a detailed project for about 8 to 10 weeks.
Project work is primarily an instructional tool that provides for “Goal-oriented learning” as well as “Intensive or Focused Learning”. This complements and augments the teacher instructed extensive learning they get during the rest of the year.
At the end of the year the children will be certified based on the project work as well as an assessment on computers conducted rigorously.
Teachers and Training
Teachers were chosen for their interest in Computer Science and in this program and not for their prior knowledge of Computer Science. As the schools chose to participate in this program, they were necessarily schools that were interested in this program. The teachers came from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. Part-time computer teachers, BTs (i.e. teach classes 6 to 8) in English, Science, Maths, Secondary grade teachers who teach primary schools were all represented in the list of teachers.
Rather than bunching up the training sessions during a couple of times, we spread it out through the whole year. The intent was be to provide training to the teachers for the next 4 to 6 lessons that they will be teaching the students in their schools.
This fits in well with the teacher as “Lead Learner” model of teaching (as opposed to teacher as “Instructor” or “Facilitator”). In the Lead Learner model, the teacher is not expected to be an expert in the topics they are teaching the students. Rather they are also learning the topics along with the students but just a little ahead of them to be able to guide them. This works well when the teacher does not know the subject ahead of time and also when the topics themselves are evolving and open ended. For eg. if you are teaching the children how to use various AI tools, which are themselves changing every day, this approach works well.
In addition to this training, our trainers also visited the schools once a month to ensure that the classes were progressing well. They will also assist the government teachers with any difficulties they may be having with any o f the lessons. Further, the trainers were always available on call to clarify any doubts the teachers may have at the time of delivering the lesson.
Infrastructure
Tamilnadu Education Department rolled out HiTech labs in all High and Higher Secondary schools by 2024-25. Most of the middle schools also got one by the end of 2025-26. The initial version of the labs comprised of a server running BOSS Linux with 10 or 20 clients working off of them. In this setup, it was very difficult to install new software (in particular Scratch). The labs commissioned in 2025-26 had independent PCs running Windows. This made the task of installing the software required for our curriculum much easier. See a status report on Infrastructure across the schools we support done in April 2025.
As many of the schools either did not have a HiTech lab, or it was not functional or it was not available for our use, we had to provide laptops to the schools. Thanks to generous support from Amazon, we were able to provide laptops to all the teachers teaching the ACE program and the schools implementing them
We had dedicated system engineers in every location who would attend to the problems with these laptops. As these were more than 4 years old, they did develop problems frequently. We either fixed the problem at site or replaced the laptop at the school and brought the faulty laptops back to our office for a more detailed evaluation/service. Any minor problems were attended to by our trainers themselves who were trained to handled basic HW service like checking the cables, and basic software work like updating the OS, connecting to network, installing new software etc.
ACE
In Practice
On Oct 19th 2023 the ACE program was inaugurated with 52 teachers from Thiruvallur District signing up to implement this program in their schools. The second version of the program started on Aug 9th. This time 53 teachers signed up from 4 districts: Thiruvallur, Thoothukudi, Villupuram and Thiruvannamalai.
Teachers
The teachers who have signed up are all from schools Asha is already working with through the Explore program. Our trainers have been visiting these schools and providing basic exposure to Computer Science to the students there. We selected teachers who are keen to learn Computer Science and were interested in what Asha was doing. Most of the teachers do not come with much knowledge of computer science and learn most of this from our training sessions. Some who come with a good knowledge of Computer Science (like part-time Computer Science teachers) learn how to teach Computer Science in a different way.
Infrastructure
We equipped each teacher with a laptop. They were encourage to take this home and use for other purposes as well to help develop comfort with using computers. Some half the schools we had selected had High-tech labs setup by the government. The rest of the schools were given 3 laptops each. But even in the schools with high-tech labs, in some cases the labs were not functional and in some other cases the labs were heavily used by the school for other purposes. Therefore we had to equip them with the laptops as well. Other than the ACEv1 teachers who received new laptops, all the other laptops given were used laptops. Asha continues maintaining these laptops with its trainers and system engineers.
Progress
There have been multiple training sessions that have been help for these teachers under both ACEv1 and ACEv2 programs. The teachers have all been teaching one class of children in their schools. The children are very enthusiastic about the program. The teachers have also been very enthusiastic. Asha has built a tracker tool for the teachers to report the progress of the lessons and for us to get a bird’s eye view of how the program is progressing. It is progressing as hoped for.
Challenges
A few challenges that have come up. The first is that teachers move to different schools. When our trained teachers move to other schools, they have been proactive in bringing another teacher for the training. This also demonstrates their commitment to this program. We have not had to stop the program in any of the 105 schools. Another problem has been with the infrastructure. Many of the schools are working with just the teachers laptop and 3 more we have given to the school. When one or two of them develops problems, the program was severely diminished. We are addressing this to the extent we can. The schools with High-tech labs, face another problem. The government has been placing a lot more demands on the High-tech labs in the form of online assessments for the students, English classes etc.
These have made it difficult for them to get time in these labs. Many of them are coming back to Asha asking for laptops for the schools. We have been providing as many as we can. Another problem is that the BT teachers (teachers who teach a subject for classes 6 to 10) often become very busy with class 10 students after January which makes it difficult for them to implement our program. They have also at times taken the help of other teachers in their school. These are all challenges that we are continuing to understand and work through. These will help us be prepared for the much more massive challenges that will face us when we take this program to the entire state.
ACE
Success of the Pilot
The pilot was tremendously successful! It went well beyond our expectations. We were hoping that 80% of the schools will complete the program and that some 80% of the students will complete the certification requirements. Instead ALL 100% of the schools completed the program and 3000 of the students in 2025-26 completed the certification requirements of clearing the assessments and submitting the project.
