NCF-2022 replaced marks with observation. Somebody has to keep the record.

What the framework actually changes

The Foundational Stage runs five years — three of preschool followed by Grades 1 and 2 — and it is the first time Indian policy has treated the preschool years as part of the school structure rather than something that happens before it.

The framework's content is arranged as a hierarchy: broad Developmental Goals, then Curricular Goals beneath them, then Competencies, then the specific Learning Outcomes a teacher can watch for. When a vendor advertises NCF-2022 mapping, that hierarchy is what it should mean. The three Developmental Goals are deliberately whole-child — that children maintain good health and wellbeing, that they become effective communicators, and that they become involved learners connected to the world around them. Early literacy and numeracy sit inside that, not above it.

One thing worth being straight about, because vendors are not always: NCF-2022 is a framework from NCERT, not a statute with a penalty attached. Pre-primary sits outside the RTE Act's six-to-fourteen remit, and what a private playschool is held to varies by state department and affiliating board. Adopt it because the record it produces is better. Check your own state's requirements before you believe anyone's deadline, including ours.

What a Holistic Progress Card actually requires

An HPC describes a child rather than scoring one. Three things separate it from a conventional report card: it is descriptive rather than numerical, cumulative rather than a snapshot from the last fortnight, and holistic — how a child moves, talks and gets along with others sits beside how they hold a pencil.

Which makes the card the easy part. Writing twenty-six of them is an afternoon. Having something true to write is a year. What a card needs behind it:

• Dated observations spread across months, not a burst in the fortnight before reports are due.
• Coverage across every child, including the quiet, cooperative ones who get observed least.
• Coverage across all the goals, not only the literacy and numeracy that feel like real work.
• Each note tied to the competency it evidences, so it can be found again in March.
• A record that belongs to the school rather than to one teacher's notebook, so it survives someone leaving in December.

Why this collapses on paper

Almost every school's first year of HPCs fails the same way, and not for lack of effort. Observation notes go into a diary or a shared class register. The diary lives in a cupboard. Nobody has time to write in it daily, so it fills in bursts. Then in March someone sits down with that stack and twenty-six cards to produce.

The result reads exactly as it was made. Reports sound alike because they were written from the same fortnight of memory, and parents can tell. A paper file also cannot be asked a question — "what have we got on Aarav's fine motor development this term?" means reading everything, so nobody asks. And children who go unobserved go unnoticed, because paper counts what is there, never what is missing.

The failure is administrative, not pedagogical. The teachers noticed plenty. It simply did not survive the journey to the card.

Which modules carry it

Five of the eighteen modules do this work, and none of them is sold separately.

All eighteen modules are included at one price, plus GST. There is no curriculum tier and no per-feature add-on, which matters here because assessment tooling is exactly the thing that usually sits behind an upgrade.

• Curriculum & HPC. Plan the year against the NCF-2022 hierarchy, then produce Holistic Progress Cards from that plan. Drafts are assembled by a scheduled job that runs once a week, early on Sunday morning, so a teacher opens something to edit rather than a blank page — and if little was recorded, the draft is thin, which is the honest result.
• Student 360. One page per child: attendance, notes, health, fees and progress together. Because the observation record sits on the child rather than in a class file, a thin record is visible — you open the page and there is nothing there.
• Academics. Classes, sections and the teacher who owns each one. Unglamorous, and it is what decides whose observations attach to which children when a section is split or a teacher changes in January.
• Timetable. Who is where, when, including cover when someone is away. An observation is always of a particular child during a particular activity; the timetable is what tells you months later who was teaching that class, and who covered it when someone was away.
• Homework. Set it, share it with parents, see who has done it. At this stage a home task is done with a parent, so what comes back tells a teacher as much about how the task landed at home as it does about the child.

Explaining a card with no marks to parents

Expect pushback on a card with no marks, and expect it from engaged parents rather than disengaged ones. A parent who was ranked throughout their own schooling reads "no marks" as "no information", and occasionally as a school dodging accountability.

What works is showing rather than explaining. A specific observation — what their child actually did last Tuesday — answers the question a percentage was only ever standing in for. The Communication module keeps announcements and direct messages where they can be found again instead of scrolling away in a class group, and PTM gives parents a slot to book with the notes attached to the child afterwards, so the conversation about the card joins the record instead of evaporating in the corridor.

What this does not do

No platform observes a child. The teacher's attention is the input and there is no substitute for it; any vendor implying otherwise is selling you twenty-six identical reports with better typography.

Nor does buying software make a school NCF-aligned. The mapping is only as good as the plan you build in it, and the NCERT framework document is the authoritative text — worth reading before you take any vendor's word for how a product maps, ours included.

And the straight disclosure: we are pre-launch. No school is running this yet, we hold no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or equivalent certification, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. What we do offer is that we set your first branch up by hand — register imported, classes and fee heads set up with you, and your teachers walked through it — and your first month is free while that happens.

Questions schools ask

Is NCF-2022 compulsory for my playschool?

It is a framework from NCERT, not a statute, and pre-primary sits outside the RTE Act's six-to-fourteen remit. What you are actually held to depends on your state's department and, if you have one, your affiliating board. Treat anyone selling you a national compliance deadline for a playschool with suspicion — us included.

Do we have to stop giving marks and grades entirely?

For the Foundational Stage the framework's position is that there is nothing to examine — assessment is observation of everyday participation and of what the child makes. In practice most schools keep a marks-free card and put the effort into making the descriptions specific enough that parents stop asking for a percentage.

How many observations does a Holistic Progress Card need per child?

The framework does not set a number and we are not going to invent one. What matters is that notes are dated, spread across the year, cover every developmental goal rather than only literacy and numeracy, and cover the quiet children as well as the loud ones. Two or three short notes a day across a class is far more workable than a writing marathon in March.

Does the software write the progress card for us?

No, and be careful with anyone who says otherwise. Curriculum & HPC assembles a draft from what teachers have already recorded against your plan — the job runs weekly, early on Sunday — so a teacher edits rather than starts from nothing. If nothing was recorded, the draft is thin. That is the point, not a defect.

We use our own curriculum — Montessori, play-based, a franchise syllabus. Does this still work?

Yes. Curriculum & HPC is a planning structure you fill in, not a syllabus we impose. The intent is that you map your existing activities onto the NCF-2022 goals rather than replacing what you teach, because the framework is about how learning is recorded far more than about what happens in the room.

Do we pay extra for the curriculum and progress card modules?

No. All eighteen modules are in every plan, from ₹9,000 a year exclusive of 18% GST. There is no setup fee, no per-module pricing and no starter tier that withholds assessment — which is worth checking with every vendor you talk to, because assessment tooling is usually where the upgrade sits.

Can we switch mid-year if our observations are already on paper?

Yes. Nothing in the setup assumes you are starting in April. We import your register, classes and fee structure by hand during setup, and your first month is free while that happens. Our setup import covers your register, classes and fee structure; observation notes from earlier in the year are not part of it. Ask in a demo exactly how a note is recorded and dated before you plan to re-key a term of paper.

Where do parents see any of this?

In the parent app, which is where daily reports and homework already land, and in the PTM conversation where the card is discussed with the notes attached to the child afterwards. Ask to see a finished card in a demo rather than taking our description of one, and ask what it looks like for a class the size of yours.

Read next

• all eighteen modules, including Curriculum & HPC
• what a teacher marks and what a parent reads
• plans from ₹9,000 a year, every module included
• NCF-2022 and the Holistic Progress Card, for playschools
• questions worth asking any preschool software vendor
• book a demo and see a real progress card