The GyanSetu program is a very cost-effective, community based option for helping to transition out-of-school children into public schools along with providing tutoring support. In over 30 years of experience in teaching, we at SHEF, have learnt that education needs to a holistic approach. One which looks at the lives of students as a whole and attempts to address the challenges that they face, including those that prevent them from attending, staying or learning in school.

Digital Study Hall (DSH), our digital innovation center, is working at creating and optimizing an online attendance and test-score management system. Anand, the director of DSH stated "We realized that children dropping out of school was a huge issue, not only because these children are no longer in school, but also because there is no system to track and register the fact that they have dropped out. Though they are no longer attending, on paper they are still registered. GyanSetu aims to address the issue of how to plug this gap".

"The online attendance system has been refined and altered according to the ever changing dynamics of the GyanSetu centers. Currently functional at all the centers, the attendance system has helped the GyanSetu team to keep track of each and every student. For instance, if the GyanSetu team spots that certain students have an attendance pattern, then the teacher of that specific center is alerted and urged to find out why this is happening. The aim of this activity is to achieve a better understanding of the challenges that our children face in order to help them further. Coupled with this, the online test score management system has been instrumental in keeping track of the academic progress of the children".

We also hope to collaborate with public schools and share our learning with them, in the hope of influencing their approach to education and children. The Gyansetu program has huge scaling potential and we are actively working with the Uttar Pradesh government to explore these possibilities.