Judged by educators themselves, the prize provides a global platform for companies and organisations to scale their products, tools, or services and expand their impact worldwide. It celebrates EdTech solutions that are creating measurable change for educators, students, and communities through technology designed to address real classroom needs.
The Global EdTech Prize is awarded across three categories: Majors, Start-ups, and Non-profits. Winners will be announced live at the World Schools Summit in London on January 17, 2027.
Vikas Pota, Founder of T4 Education and the Global EdTech Prize, congratulated SwiftPAL from ConveGenius.AI in India for being named among the Top 25 shortlists for the second Global EdTech Prize.
“Technology in the classroom holds the enormous potential to close learning gaps and fully equip today’s young people for the rapidly emerging workplace of tomorrow. But we can only harness technology effectively when it is made to work for educators to tackle the challenges they face every day,” Vikas Pota said.
He added, “Judged by educators themselves, the Global EdTech Prize exists to bridge the gap between technology and teachers and give a global platform to the solutions that are making a real impact in classrooms so that impact can be scaled worldwide.”
Shashank Pandey, Co-Founder of ConveGenius.AI, said, “Over the last decade, we have learned that learning outcomes at scale improve when policy, budgets, programmes, technology, and people work in harmony. Technology and AI can be powerful accelerators when aligned with national priorities and implemented well.”
He further stated that independent third-party research shows students using ConveGenius’ PAL platform learn 2.3 times faster, helping bridge years of accumulated learning gaps.
“Being named a global finalist for the Global EdTech Prize 2026 is a tremendous honour. It validates a decade of conviction, execution, and partnership with state governments to create a level playing field for every child,” Pandey said.
SwiftPAL is ConveGenius's personalised adaptive learning platform, built for learners of Bharat to support their journey towards grade-level outcomes. The platform begins each learner’s journey at their present-day level and progresses according to their pace.
The need for solutions such as SwiftPAL has been highlighted by learning challenges in India and globally. ASER 2024 found that only 23.4% of Std III children in government schools can read a Std II-level text, despite 98% of children of that age being enrolled in school. Globally, the World Bank and UNESCO describe this challenge as “learning poverty”, estimating that 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text.
SwiftPAL has been developed to address the gap between school enrolment and achieving grade-level learning outcomes. The platform first diagnoses what a learner actually knows instead of relying on textbook expectations. Through adaptive assessments, it identifies missed concepts and gaps from previous grades.
Based on these assessments, SwiftPAL creates an individual learning path for each learner rather than assigning identical grade-level content to all students. Learners who need support with understanding and applying specific concepts receive guided practice followed by opportunities to demonstrate mastery.
Students use videos, practice questions, hints, and retries on devices inside school ICT labs. They dedicate two class periods each week to catching up with grade-level concepts through SwiftPAL, enabling measurable learning gains and helping students progress towards expected outcomes.
An independent randomised controlled trial by the University of Chicago's Development Innovation Lab, led by Nobel laureate Dr Michael Kremer, tracked SwiftPAL across 120 schools in all 26 districts of Andhra Pradesh over 17 months. The study validated that students using SwiftPAL learned 2.3 times faster than expected, achieving close to two additional years of learning.
In Uttar Pradesh, under India's first outcomes-based financing model in public education, students using SwiftPAL outperformed peers by 16 to 54 percentage points across subjects. The evaluation was conducted independently across 280 schools, covering 72,000 students.
In Rajasthan, the programme expanded from a 60-school pilot to more than 3,700 schools under government mandate.
SwiftPAL now reaches over 4 million students across 15,000+ schools in 22 Indian states and 145 districts, at a cost of USD 10–35 per student per year. The programme has been recognised with the CIPS Innovation Award 2025, named a Government of India GeM Top Seller in the Startup Category, and awarded Best Personalised and Adaptive Learning Solution at the 16th World Education Summit.
About T4 Education, the organisation behind the Global EdTech Prize, states that every child, everywhere, deserves a good education. The organisation is building the world's largest community of teachers and schools to achieve this together. Its digital media platform provides opportunities for educators to network, collaborate, share good practices, and support efforts to improve learning and school culture. T4 Education works to amplify teachers’ voices, emphasising that the future of education must be built by listening to those at the centre of classrooms.
The Global EdTech Prize will continue its annual recognition across the Majors, Start-ups, and Non-Profits categories, evaluating outstanding EdTech products, tools, and services through rigorous criteria.
The top 10 finalists in each category will be announced in September. Finalists will be invited to the World Schools Summit, where they will showcase their work before an expert panel featuring leading figures in technology and education, including investors and policymakers from around the world.
The expert panel will select the final three nominees in each category, who will present their products and tools before educators at the World Schools Summit. Educators will vote through secret ballot to determine the winners, who will be announced live on stage at the conclusion of the summit.
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