Today’s blog is the second in a mini-series of three sharing our experiences of adapting computing curriculum resources for different contexts, and of training teachers to use them in schools. Last month we wrote about our collaboration with partners in Kenya. Here we discuss our work in Odisha, India.

This article has been written by Fiona Coventry, Impact Manager, and Mamta Manaktala, Senior Learning Manager.

A long-term partnership in Odisha

We know that building long-term partnerships with organisations that have local expertise is key to making a real impact for young people. This fact was echoed by people involved in education initiatives worldwide who spoke at the What Works Hub for Global Education 2024 annual conference, which Fiona followed online. Our work in Odisha is an example of this.

We have now been working with our government partner in Odisha, Panchasakha Shikhya Setu (formerly Mo School Abhiyan), for four years. Our journey began in 2021, when we worked together to establish a network of Code Clubs in government and government-aided schools in the state. In 2023, our focus shifted to developing a formal computing curriculum for students in grades 9 and 10 (known locally as the Kaushali curriculum), in collaboration with two other partners. 

Work in the 2024/2025 academic year

Adaptation is a crucial aspect of how we ensure our computing resources are accessible to as many young people as possible. For our work in Odisha, we adapted content from The Computing Curriculum and then localised it to fit the requirement of the students.

In Odisha’s June 2024 to April 2025 academic year, we rolled out adapted computing curriculum content for grade 10 students, for students who had already learned with adapted grade 9 content in 2023/24. We worked with our partners to develop the curriculum content and trained 310 master teachers from across Odisha, along with 30 State Resource Groups (SRGs) to support them. Before the end of 2024, the 310 master teachers subsequently trained 8109 teachers, who would reach an estimated 880,000 students with the grade 9 and 10 curriculum content. We had an ongoing responsibility to support 1846 of these teachers in our allocated districts, with an estimated reach to around 205,000 students.

Impact of the grade 9 and 10 curriculum

In early 2025 we issued a follow-up survey about student learning, content, and training to a sample of teachers in our allocated districts, and 310 teachers responded. (We used a stratified sampling approach designed to ensure the survey results were representative of all teachers.)

At least 87% of teachers agreed that students achieved the outcomes we asked about, e.g. regarding coding skills, staying safe online, and use of data in machine intelligence. 

Moreover, responses related to our grade 9 curriculum remained similarly high compared to 2024 survey responses.

Teachers also expressed their appreciation for the computing curriculum resources and training in free-text comments and interviews, for example:

“IT and coding is essential nowadays. So a good initiative, adding this to schools’ curriculum.” – Teacher in Odisha

“The training was quite informative, interesting and helpful.” – Teacher in Odisha

“It is very useful training for me. It boosts my knowledge and helps me for classroom transaction.” – Teacher in Odisha

Addressing challenges

An ongoing challenge in Odisha has been supporting those teachers who lack experience with computing and/or with our recommended teaching approaches for computing. We have been working hard to help these teachers develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to effectively deliver the curriculum content in the limited time they have alongside their other professional commitments.

In the 2023/2024 academic year, many teachers had told us they needed further training and support. For this reason, we offered longer training in the 2024/25 academic year. We also adapted our training approach based on learning from earlier phases, such as including activities teachers could complete on their smartphones, enabling more hands-on learning while reducing dependence on available IT equipment. The outcome of this was positive: in the follow-up survey, fewer teachers felt they needed additional training to deliver the lessons, and most teachers we interviewed felt this year’s training was an improvement on the previous year’s.

Our team also ran weekly webinars to support teachers and address their queries. These were very well received by teachers. Of the responses received to feedback form available after each webinar:

• 97% agreed that the “webinar helped me to understand the topics covered more clearly.”
• 98% agreed that the “webinar was useful to support my teaching.”

This was supported by comments from teachers, for example:

“All questions were answered. The webinar was good. Gained a lot. Thank you very much.”  – Teacher in Odisha

“I learned many unknown things about Scratch, it will help my classroom teaching.” – Teacher in Odisha

In this year’s follow-up survey, teachers also less frequently indicated they felt they needed “additional content to support students”. They provided useful feedback and suggestions regarding the curriculum content, e.g. further simplifying and localising it, which we will incorporate into future resource development.

Another persistent challenge has been limited access to IT equipment and the internet in schools, and what this means for student-device ratios and how teachers are able to deliver the content. For future resources we are developing, we are therefore adapting the amount of content to be delivered over a series of lessons.

Next steps for our partnership in Odisha

In 2025, we are working with the same partners to implement a curriculum for grades 6 to 8, initially in around 460 schools. We and our partners have developed the curriculum content and are currently in the process of training teachers in preparation for classroom delivery.

We are also continuing to support the teachers previously trained on the grade 9 and 10 curriculum through webinars and school visits.

Want to see our curriculum resources?

You can access our free Computing Curriculum resources on our website — we are currently working to make the materials for India, and for Kenya, downloadable there.

Look out for the final blog in this mini-series next month, which will focus on our computer science curriculum in Telangana, India.