What

PractEZ is a WhatsApp-native blended learning platform that -

• helps students reinforce classroom learning through bite-sized independent practice, and
• provides teachers real-time insights into student learning with data from their practice sessions.

Think Fitbit for classroom learning: providing the steady, daily practice students need to build mastery, and the real-time data educators need to drive effective instruction (all without adding to their workload.)

Here’s an ~5 min introduction/demo:

Why

Certain Problems Exist

There’s a near endless list of problems that plague classroom learning, and a few relevant to PractEZ are documented here: 1, 2, 3, 4

And, well, opportunities exist too: 5, 6

The Quiet Crisis of Practice, Teacher Capacity, and the Paucity of Time

That age-old saying “practice makes perfect” somehow loses its power within the four walls of a classroom. Inside, students watch, listen, nod - and maybe even feel that spark of curiosity when the teacher unveils the dance between triangles, squares, and the Pythagorean theorem. Sure, it’s fascinating for a moment or two, but fascination fades fast when it’s not fed.

Because learning doesn’t really happen during the demonstration - it happens afterward; in the quiet spaces where a pupil wrestles with the concept alone. The classroom might ignite understanding, but practice is what cements it. Yet, most systems stop at ignition. We celebrate engagement, attention, and participation forgetting that none of these truly mean mastery.

Think about it: how many times have pupils watched an elegant proof unfold on the board, only to forget the logic behind it weeks later? Attention can light the spark, but only independent practice turns that spark into a steady flame. Without chances to apply, to fail, to correct, to own their learning, pupils stay spectators to their own education.

Independent practice isn’t an afterthought - it’s the main act. It’s where curiosity becomes competence. Where learning transforms from something taught into something owned.

But let’s look at the reality of our classrooms today. The timetable says forty minutes for most subjects in the middle years, fifty minutes in secondary school - a neat, symmetrical schedule that looks perfect on paper. But within those minutes hide interruptions, announcements, attendance calls, and a dozen tiny delays that can steal away teaching time. Now, consider this: a typical mathematics textbook for Grade 6 and above carries at least 14 chapters, each with five or more distinct learning/testing objectives - concepts, applications, and problem types that must all be understood and mastered. Spread across roughly 135 teaching hours a year (NCF guidelines), that’s barely nine hours per chapter, or less than two hours per learning objective, including explanations, examples, doubts, and tests. Time isn’t just tight - it’s gasping for air.

Even if a teacher wanted to nurture independent practice, the system leaves no room for it. With an average pupil–teacher ratio of 30:1 and around 200 working days in a school year, expecting a teacher to review each pupil’s independent work every single day translates to over 6,000 learning instances annually - per subject, per teacher - as exit-slips, or worksheets. And that’s assuming just one question a day is enough to prove mastery, which, realistically, it isn’t. It also assumes there’s no revision, no reattempts, no time lost to tests, events, or administration. Under those conditions, even tracking a single concept for each learner becomes an administrative impossibility.

So, practice - the very heartbeat of mastery - quietly migrates outside the classroom walls. It becomes homework, the most familiar and overused extension of classwork, and suffers from the same structural flaws. Teachers still lack the bandwidth to personalize or review it meaningfully, and students, weighed down by packed schedules and uneven support at home, often can’t sustain consistent effort. The very conditions that limit classroom practice follow them beyond it, leaving homework less a solution and more an act of hope. The result? Inconsistency, inequity, and eventually, attrition in learning depth. This isn’t simply a case of negligence by teachers or oversight by schools - it’s a design flaw. The system was never structured to make space for repeated, independent practice. It simply assumed that students, somewhere between the bell and bedtime, would take care of it themselves.

And yet, even if time magically expanded, the challenge wouldn’t end there. The State of Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Education Report (2023) lays bare a deeper fault line. Ten percent of India’s teachers lack any professional qualification, and among those who are “qualified,” over half of primary school teachers lack the appropriate qualification for their grade level. The mismatch runs deep: 55% of mathematics classes in government schools and 50% in private schools are led by teachers who never formally studied mathematics in college. Meanwhile, Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) results show that only about 32–38% of teacher candidates in key streams pass, with most scoring between 40–50%. In other words, even the system’s gatekeeping for competence is letting through uncertainty.

So when we talk about “incapability,” it’s not to point fingers at the individuals in the classroom; most teachers are doing everything humanly possible within a system designed for survival, not excellence. The problem is structural - a curriculum stuffed beyond what forty-minute periods can bear, a workforce unevenly qualified and overburdened, and an evaluation culture that prizes coverage over comprehension.

Practice isn’t an add-on, it’s the missing half of learning. It’s what the classroom cannot offer, but what mastery demands. Until systems reimagine learning as something that extends beyond the bell - where pupils actively practice, reflect, and apply - we’ll keep mistaking exposure for education.

These problems matter

Learning without practice doesn’t stick

Missed learning is cumulative

These are systemic, but fixable.

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How

Here’s how PractEZ functions as a teaching assistant and addresses the two critical problems above:

1. PractEZ provides a platform for practice - a personal WhatsApp conversation with PractEZ - for students to engage in regular, independent practice of the material they’ve learned in class. The practice sessions triggered by their teachers contain a set of multiple choice questions that are based on the day’s learning objective as taught in the class. This structured environment encourages consistent repetition and application of skills, which are critical for long-term retention.

2. PractEZ also tracks students’ performances across the practice session and offers objective data for teachers to make informed, data-driven decisions about instructional strategies. This helps in identifying areas where additional teaching and learning are needed and tailoring interventions to meet the needs of the class.

Our Theory of Change

IF we provide students with easy access to academic practice material and teachers with objective data on teaching effectiveness,
THEN students will engage in learning outside of school and teachers will drive effective instruction,
RESULTING in improved academic performance in classrooms.

Your Support

Contribute financially:
Pliss be dumping your hard-earned monies here. (₹2000/student-year, expected to reduce with scale.)

Contribute by volunteering:
We need bucket-loads of content created. Think of something like ~10k MCQs per subject per grade. Perhaps you could help create some beautiful content?

why ¬ try?

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque faucibus ex sapien vitae pellentesque sem placerat. In id cursus mi pretium tellus duis convallis. Tempus leo eu aenean sed diam urna tempor. Pulvinar vivamus fringilla lacus nec metus bibendum egestas. Iaculis massa nisl malesuada lacinia integer nunc posuere. Ut hendrerit semper vel class aptent taciti sociosqu. Ad litora torquent per conubia nostra inceptos himenaeos.