Fight Against School Dropouts: Gujarat Rolls Out AI-Powered Early Warning System
Wadhwani AI
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By: Tanushree Dutta and Nirmit Zaveri
How to stop a student from dropping out of school? For decades, the answer has been broad, one-size-fits-all policies that often fail to address the complex interplay of social, economic, health, and academic factors. This reactive approach meant that countless students have been left behind. To solve this, a new model of governance is needed—one that is preventive and evidence-based.
With an innovative initiative, Wadhwani AI, at the behest of the Government of Gujarat, and in partnership with UNICEF is showing that it can. The state-wide deployment of an AI-powered Early Warning System (EWS) marks inventive governance, using data to protect the educational future of each individual child.
The Machinery of Proactive Governance
Launched during Shala Praveshotsav 2025, the state’s flagship school enrollment drive, this system has been rolled out with remarkable scope. It covers all 37 districts and over 50,000 schools, processing a full academic year’s data—on attendance, test scores, and socio-economic status—for over 1 crore students from Grade 3 to Grade 8. The system has identified roughly 167,000 students requiring support, significantly cutting down administrative effort. The EWS is an artificial intelligence layer integrated into an existing platform - Child Tracking System (CTS). AI searches for patterns of risks for every student and highlights the top three contributing risk factors which might lead to dropout. This explainable approach means a teacher doesn't need a technical background to understand if a student's risk is driven by academic struggles, attendance issues, or other challenges. This visibility transforms the AI's output from a statistic into an individual action, allowing teachers to conduct more informed and compassionate conversations with family.
Systemic Change, Validated at the Every Level
The system empowers the entire administrative chain:
Principals and school teachers can access at-risk lists on their dashboards, understand individual student needs, and implement tailored classroom-level interventions.
Cluster Resource Coordinators (CRCs) can monitor risk patterns across multiple schools, providing targeted guidance and follow-up.
District and State officials can use aggregate insights for policy formulation, strategic resource allocation, and systemic improvements.
The impact is a more efficient and effective education system. By focusing limited resources on students who need the most support, the government can move away from broad, untargeted efforts. The Gujarat Chief Minister’s Office has praised this initiative as it makes interventions more timely and targeted, saving valuable time and resources while achieving better outcomes.
Democratizing AI for Social Good
With an eye on the future, we are committed to making the Early Warning System an open-source solution. By sharing our blueprint, we hope to spark similar initiatives, fostering a community dedicated to using AI to solve human challenges, and creating a blueprint that can help secure every child's right to education.