Nayana Karia

April 2007

India: An Overview of Technology in Education

A brief account of how technology has been introduced into the Indian education

system over the past 25 years.

Table of Contents

Introduction: India Today.............................................................................................3India: Land of Contrasts...............................................................................................4

Country Facts...........................................................................................................4The Indian Education System: Timeline: 25 Years........................................................5ICT in Education: Policy and Initiatives.........................................................................6Major Policy Statements and Initiatives.......................................................................7

2000: NCERT release of National Curriculum Framework for School Education........72004: Edusat............................................................................................................82002 – 2007: The Tenth Plan....................................................................................82002: Vidya Vahini...................................................................................................82006: Broadband connectivity in all secondary schools...........................................92007: Digital Library and Information Network.........................................................9UNESCO: Gesci.........................................................................................................92002: Technology Tools for Teaching & Training in India (Project T4)......................92004: Bridges to the Future Initiative.....................................................................102005: Indo-US Collaboration...................................................................................10Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre...................................................10Other Public-Private Partnerships for ICT in Education...........................................11Initiatives for ICT use in Non-Formal Education......................................................12ICT for Special Needs.............................................................................................12

Reality Check.............................................................................................................13Conclusion.................................................................................................................15References.................................................................................................................16

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INDIA: ICT IN EDUCATION

Source: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/News/press-releases/IPP%20Economic

%20Reform%20in%20India.pdf

Introduction: India Today

On May 31, 2006, the President of India addressed a standing-room only audience at

the campus of the University of California, San Diego (Ramsey, D. June 5, 2006).

Somewhat in the style described in a very old limerick:

“He departed one day the Einsteinian way and came back the previous night.”

His journey was made possible using high-definition cameras from Rashtrapati

Bhavan at New Delhi and a network of dedicated optical fiber cable stretching over

10,000 miles from New Delhi to La Jolla, California. (Ramsey, June 5, 2006)

“Today what we are witnessing is an example of making virtual presence from India to the University of California…We should aim at making the bandwidth available without hindrance and at no cost. Making the bandwidth available is like government laying roads…" (President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam, May 31, 2006, U.S.-India Summit on Education, Research & Technology).

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India: Land of Contrasts

“India is a country of grand contradictions. While it is a global leader in the knowledge economy, it is also home to more than half the world’s poor and illiterate people, most of whom are women.” (Reddi & Sinha, 2004).

Country Facts

The 2001 Census of India provides the following information:

Population - 1027 Million

Literacy rate: 65.38%

According to the World Development Indicator 2005 Report :

34.7% of people are living below $1 a day

79.9% of the population live below $2 a day

According to The Human Development Report, 2004:

21% of the population suffer malnutrition

(Department for International Development Website, accessed April 2007)

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The Indian Education System: Timeline: 25 Years

“If one were to identify the single most important achievement in the field of education by the government in the post-Independence era, it would have to be putting a school within reach of almost every child….Of course, a school within reach is not the end - it is only the beginning…” (InfoChange Education Website)

In 1976, education was brought under the concurrent purview of both the Central and

State governments. While the Centre provides general direction on educational policy

and curriculum, the individual state governments manage the vast network of

schools. State governments either directly run schools, or support privately-run

schools through grants. There are a small number of private schools in each state

that are completely independent of government funding (Infochange Education

Website).

Education in India: A Snapshot

1986 -1992 : Free and Compulsory Education

Pursuant to the National Policy on Education (1986) and revised Plan of Action

(1992), a majority of States and Union Territories have introduced free

education in Classes I-XII of their schools. (Government of India, Ministry of

Human Resource Development, Department of Higher Education Website (b)).

1979: Improving Outreach: Non-Formal Education

In 1979, the Government of India launched a program of Non-Formal

Education (NFE) for children of 6-14 years age group, who cannot join regular

schools. These children include school drop-outs, working children, and

children from areas without easy access to schools. Initially implemented in

ten educationally backward states, the scheme was extended in 1987 and is

now operational in 25 states/Union Territories. 100% assistance is given to

voluntary organizations for running NFE centers. (ILO Website)

2001: The Mid-Day Meal Scheme: Boosting Enrolment, Attendance,

and Retention

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In a landmark decision on November 28, 2001 the Supreme Court of India

made it obligatory for the government to provide cooked meals to all children

in all government and government assisted primary schools. Though resisted

vigorously by State governments initially, the programme became almost

universal by 2005, making this the largest school feeding programme in the

world, reaching 120 million primary school children.

(Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of

Higher Education Website (b) ; Midday Meal scheme)

1949 onwards: Caste Based Reservation in Educational Institutions

Though caste based reservations were introduced in 1949, in 1990, a further

27% of seats in institutions of higher education were reserved for Other

Backward Classes (OBCs), over and above the existing 22.5% reservation for

Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). (Wikipedia, Reservation

in India)

ICT in Education: Policy and Initiatives

It is against this backdrop that we need to view the role of information and

communication technologies (ICT) in education in India.

For the purposes of this discussion, ICT in education can be:

Alternative instructional delivery systems such as radio, educational TV, and audio-visual communicationComputers and computer-based systems for instructional delivery and management, such as CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction), use of multi-media and Internet/web based education (Rai & Bhattacharya)

Since the 1950s, policy has consistently favoured the use of ICT in education (Reddi &

Sinha (2004):

“From the use of radio to spearhead the green revolution, to satellite-based, one-way and interactive television for rural development in some of the most backward districts, to today’s thrust for the use of open and distance learning models to serve the larger populations, India has tried it all, with varying degrees of success… Radio has a penetration of 100 per cent in the country while satellite and terrestrial television cover nearly 80 per cent of the country”

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Gyan Darshan was launched in January, 2000, with three completely digital and

round-the-clock TV channels dedicated to education. In November 2001, an FM radio

channel, Gyan Vani was launched through different FM stations in the country. (GOI

Ministry of HRD Press Release, October 21, 2003).

Major Policy Statements and Initiatives

In the late 1990s, deregulation of the telecommunication industry began a dramatic

improvement in access to basic telephony and Internet services for the general

population. Key government initiatives are discussed below:

2000: NCERT release of National Curriculum Framework for School

Education

Providing access to global information sources was made a priority goal under the

National Curriculum Framework for School Education released in 2000 by the

National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT). (UNESCO Website

(a); NCERT Website (a))

Other stated goals included:

the formulation of plans for the integration of computers into the curriculum,

the creation of a framework for enhancing learning opportunities using ICTs

across the curriculum

It was also recognized that the success of the implementation of ICTs depends on the

provision of professional development opportunities for teachers.  

Each state's implementation of these guiding principles differs and levels of

investment, connectivity and curriculum provisions for ICT integration vary greatly. A

report of the status of initiatives in the various states is available at the GOI, Ministry

of HRD Department of Higher Education Website (d).

Towards these stated goals, in 2006, NCERT released PDF copies of all its textbooks

from class I to class XII on its website (Sivaraman, July 13, 2006, NCERT Website (b)).

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“…this may be the first time any such repository of textbooks has been available publicly on the internet.”

2004: Edusat

Launched in September 2004 at a cost of USD 20 million, Edusat is India’s first

dedicated education satellite.

“India will require 10,000 new schools each year and meeting the teaching needs on such a scale [by conventional methods] will be impossible…” Madhavan Nair, chairman of ISRO, quoted in New Scientist, (Tata, September 20, 2004)

With footprints covering the entire country, Edusat makes it possible for receive

Direct to Home quality broadcasts of educational programs using any television set

and a low-cost receiver. The result of a collaboration between the Indian Space

Research Organization (ISRO)and, the Union Ministry of Human Resource

Development, state departments of education and the Indira Gandhi National Open

University. This infrastructure is available to all sectors of education, but primarily to

publicly funded and implementing agencies that will be responsible for transmission

and programming for their defined audiences (Iype, July 28, 2005).

2002 – 2007: The Tenth Plan

The Tenth Plan outlined goals of improving access and reducing disparities with the

Common School System, as well as:

renewal of curricula with emphasis on vocationalisation and employment-

oriented courses;

expansion and diversification of the Open Learning System;

reorganization of teacher training and greater use of ICT

(GOI, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education and

Literacy Website (c))

2002: Vidya Vahini

In 2002, the Indian government launched a project called Vidya Vahini to provide for

IT and IT-enabled education in 60,000 schools in India over three years (India has

about 1.1 million schools), as part of a Rs 6,000 crore (USD 1.2 billion) project.

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Beginning with a pilot covering 150 schools the government proposes to equip each

school with a computer lab equipped with Internet, Intranet and television to

facilitate video-conferencing, Web-broadcasting and e-learning. (Kumar, A., October

9, 2002)

2006: Broadband connectivity in all secondary schools

On May 20, 2006, The Government of India, Ministry of HRD, Department of

Secondary and Higher Education issued an order for the Constitution of an

Integration Action Plan to implement Broadband connectivity in all secondary

schools. (Order dated May 20, 2006, GOI, HRD, Dept. of Secondary and Higher

Education Website (e))

2007: Digital Library and Information Network

Based on recommendations made by different state open universities and distance

education institutions (DEIs), the Indira Gandhi National Open University's (IGNOU)

board of management has approved the National Open and Distance Learners Library

and Information Network (NODLINET) initiative. The expert committee set up by the

ministry for human resource development (MHRD) has endorsed the initiative, which

will now be implemented in a phased manner within a period of five years. (Times

News Network, April 22, 2007)

UNESCO: Gesci

At the international level, the United Nations has generated the “Global school and

Communities Initiative” (Gesci), a special campaign to promote the use of technology

in education (UNESCO Website (d)). From their Bangalore base, Gesci will work with

the Indian ministries of Information Technology and Education facilitating policy

support, technical assistance and global resources for the initiative.

2002: Technology Tools for Teaching & Training in India (Project T4)

In September 2002, the T4 project was launched in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and

Jharkhand, and subsequently, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The program offers

interactive radio instruction (IRI) and educational television for mathematics, science

and English as a second language and is designed to reach some of the hardest to

Page 8 of 24

reach populations. Funded by USAID, with collaboration of state governments and

local organizations, the IRI programmes in Kannada are broadcast to nearly 165,000

schools (Project T4 Website and related articles). Video films in the local language

are telecast by the state government via EDUSAT, covering about 885 schools.

Teacher training in these schools has been undertaken with the support of the local

state governments, and the schools have been provided with Teachers’ Guides. An

evaluation of the learning gains among the students and the improvements in

teaching practices is ongoing. A copy of the Evaluation Plan is available at the project

Website (e). An extract of field notes written by an EDC staff member after a field

visit in Chhattisgarh provides a glimpse of results.

“From the very first day of the IRI programme here in Chhattisgarh there has been a positive response from teachers, students, audiences at large and people from the field. This response comes not only from the pilot areas where the project was launched, but also from the areas and schools we haven’t even targeted. One such school was randomly chosen for a visit by EDC on October 16, 2004.  As it turned out, the resource official of one of the clusters of Abhanpur block has taken the pains to run the IRI programme in his school with his personal funds. “(EDC Staff member Fieldnotes, July 2003)

2004: Bridges to the Future Initiative

This is a partnership between the International Literacy Institute (ILI) at the University

of Pennsylvania (USA), Byrraju Foundation, IIIT, and other agencies in the state of

Andhra Pradesh. The program aimed at providing literacy programs in the local

language to out-of-school youth and primary school students, using computer

infrastructure in schools after hours. Results of a two-year long impact study show

dramatic results in putting drop-out youth back into school, and raising learning

achievement of in-school children aged 8-10 years in poor rural settings (Wagner,

Sridharan & Daswani, January 9, 2007).

2005: Indo-US Collaboration

Indo-U.S. Interuniversity Network for Higher Education and Research was

launched in 2005, a collaboration between over 20 American universities and Amrita

University, The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Department of

Science and Technology (DST) to enhance higher education and research in India

through the Edusat e-learning network.

The Indo-US collaboration will use Edusat to deliver classes taught by US faculty to

hundreds of colleges and universities throughout India, focusing on areas such as

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engineering and computer science, information and communication technologies,

materials science, biotechnology and bioinformatics, nanotechnology, medical

sciences and management sciences. It also aims to create and make available to

Indian learners, a digital library of teaching materials and assets of participating

faculty and researchers.

Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre

Mission 2007 seeks to establish 600,000 Village Resource Centres by August 15,

2007, coinciding with India’s celebration of 60 years of independence. (Swaminathan,

M.S., November 25, 2006). Establishing connectivity and covering the ‘last mile’ are

imperative to this ambitious plan. To that end, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)

is planning to connect 80,000 villages of India through wireless broadband.

 “ BSNL's project will further boost the Central government's e-Governance agenda. Telemedicine, health care, information on agriculture, distance education are some of the projects among the priority list of the government for e-Governance. It has plans to cover 74,000 villages via WiMax. 20,000 more villages will be covered on the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL).” (Desai, CXO, January 25, 2007)

In another venture, San Diego based QUALCOMM Incorporated has allied with the

Nasscom Foundation to provide CDMA2000-based wireless Internet connectivity

solutions to 65 Village Resource Centres under Nasscom’s Rural Knowledge Network

Program. (US-India Summit Blog June 16, 2006)

Other Public-Private Partnerships for ICT in Education

There is a plethora of Public - Private Partnerships (PPP) and Initiatives in which state

governments have partnered with large private sector organizations and

multinational corporations to help bring computer enabled education to the masses.

Some of these PPP include:

HEADSTART in Madhya Pradesh (2003) with provider of Linux technologies,

Red Hat India. (Sharma, November 19, 2002; Government of MP Website)

Project Shiksha (2004) with Microsoft in West Bengal, Karnataka, Andaman

and Nicobar Islands, Lakshwadeep, and Tamil Nadu. (Microsoft India Website)

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The IntelTeach Program (February 2000) to train classroom teachers in over

35 cities nationwide to use technology to improve teaching and learning.

(IntelTeach Website)

Shiksha India (December 2001), a non-profit organization set up by the

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), has created a teachers’ portal using

open source tools and technologies. (Shiksha India Website)

Community Learning Centres (2003) were set up by the Azim Premji

Foundation in rural Karnataka. A CLC has about 6-8 computers in a

Government Higher Primary School, used by children of that school during

school hours for learning curriculum through interactive games and exercises.

They are used by the community before or after school hours and during

holidays. So far, about 90 CLCs have been set up. (Jain, R., March 25, 2003)

Brief details of these and other initiatives are available at the UNESCO and individual

project websites, however, details of evaluations conducted and current status of

these projects could not be tracked.

Initiatives for ICT use in Non-Formal Education

Some initiatives toward the use of ICT in non-formal education include:

Computer Based Functional Literacy Program (2004) with Tata Consultancy

Services in in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,

Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal (Tata Literacy Programme Website).

Hole-In-The-Wall Training Systems (2002 – 2003) developed by NIIT, for which

the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank subsidiary invested $1.6

million for computer kiosks in more than 60 locations to enable

underprivileged children in India to learn from a web-based curriculum

(UNESCO Website (b)).

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India IT Freedom Project (2002) was launched in Andhra Pradesh in

partnership with Freedom Scientific Inc., USA. The project seeks to make ICT

accessible to visually challenged learners by the use of screen reading

software. (The Hindu, August 6, 2002, and UNESCO Website)

The UNESCO Website provides details of various other programs for ICT use in the

non-formal sector; however, current status details are not available.

ICT for Special Needs

There are some Government as well as private initiatives (Agarwal, 2003) exploring

the use of ICT for persons with disabilities (PWD), for example,

IIT Chennai has developed a local language editor with speech recogntion

capabilities available in 15 Indian languages along with English.

IIIT Hyderabad recently developed a software to read web pages written in Hindi

or Telugu.

The National Association for the Blind, Delhi is developing a library of electronic

educational material for PWDs. Some 1500 titles will be stored using a format

accessible with a screen reader or for direct embossing of the text in Braille.

In 2003, work began on Screen Access For All (SAFA), an open source initiative to

develop a screen reading software for vision impaired persons to read and write

in their language of choice. (SAFA Homepage)

Information about the current status of all these initiatives is however difficult to find.

In 2002, The Spastic Society of Karnataka undertook a study for the Azim Premji

Foundation, to assess the impact of computer aided learning on children with

learning disabilities in rural Karnataka. The study concludes that computer aided

instruction offers significant improvements in visual motor coordination, social

intelligence and reading skills. (Azim Premjee Foundation Website (d)). There is

however, no information available about any initiatives for children with disabilities

launched thereafter.

Reality Check

As stated by Keniston (2002a), “You cannot believe a lot of what you are told”.

Page 12 of 24

There are many initiatives and many goals. Though not lacking in ambition, to what

extent they have been implemented beyond pilot phases and sustained remains to

be seen.

There is little information available about actual implementation, evaluation,

support and maintenance of the various public – private sector partnerships. “As

soon as these high-profile projects end… the computers disappear and villagers

lose the benefits.” (McGivering, May 25, 2003)

There is also little evidence of coordination between the different implementing

agencies or sharing of experience “about what works and what does

not.”(Keniston, 2002a)

“At least fifty grassroots projects are currently using modern ICT for development in India. Surprisingly, these projects have rarely been studied. No comparisons have been made between them. They are seldom in touch with each other. Lessons learned in one project are not transmitted to others. Appropriate technologies are rarely evaluated. Central questions of financial sustainability, scalability and cost recovery are hardly ever addressed. So, opportunities to learn from the diverse, creative Indian experience so far remain almost entirely wasted. (Keniston, 2002a)”

The country still suffers major power shortages, poor maintenance of telephone

lines, extreme poverty, and illiteracy. There is an inherent irony in all this

discussion about wiring India. The Public Report on Basic Education, the PROBE

report (Evans, 1999) recorded the lack of or dysfunctional state of basic amenities

in many schools.

“As many as 52 per cent lacked playgrounds, 89 per cent did not have toilets and 59 per cent did not have drinking water. As for teaching aids, 26 per cent did not have blackboards, 59 per cent had no access to maps and charts, 67 per cent lacked any kind of teaching kits, and 75 per cent had no toys for the children. In 77 per cent of the schools, there were no libraries.” (Infochange Education Website, accessed April 29, 2007)

Despite caste based quotas in educational institutions, in place since 1949, there

is no empirical information about the social constraints related to caste,

community and gender that continue to hinder access to technology.

Keniston (2002b) observes that there are four facets to the Digital Divide in India,

that stem from differences in wealth, as well as language (there are over 325

languages spoken in India) and culture, national wealth and the digital elitism of IT

professionals. In a similar vein, Ahuja et.al, (2006) state that “…education is perhaps

the country’s great unequalizer.“

These paragraphs from Jain’s Blog (2003) provide a glimpse of the road ahead.

Page 13 of 24

“In Madhya Pradesh (MP), I also spent half a day visiting various villages around Bhopal. The abiding memory I have is that of a classroom of 24 children (ages 8-9), half of them sitting on 3 computers in groups of four, and learning. This is part of MP’s Headstart programme, where over 2,700 schools in villages have been equipped with computers to assist in educating students…

…Seeing the kids there operating the keyboard and mouse with ease, I realised that they (and I) could have been in a school in Mumbai or anywhere else…for them, the digital divide had been bridged through these computers. Children everywhere have the same levels of curiosity. They can learn at the same quick pace of their city brethren. For these children, the computer is an ally, a friend, a window to a new world.

And then the reality sinks in. This effort is but a drop in the ocean. There are 50,000 villages just in MP. There are over 600,000 villages in India. We are touching but a handful of people. It will take many many years to the current pace of roll-out to reach out all the children. And by then, India would have lost yet another generation.”

As explained by Keniston (2002a),

“Until the costs of the last mile of basic IT devices, and of local language software are brought down, the goal of wiring India will remain unachieved. Low-cost technological solutions alone are of course not solutions to the problems of development, but they are prerequisites for IT in India.” (Keniston 2002a)

There is little discussion about the quality of the instructional material provided

for mass learning, or the pedagogies employed or local relevance. Technology

alone is not enough. Though there are several local language initiatives in

implementation (such as the Tata Literacy Project), in order to make a real dent,

these need to be considerably upscaled to reach the rural and underprivileged

masses. Arora (2007) also recognizes the need to change pedagogies and

mindsets (Arora, 2007):

“To make a genuine impact on learning outcomes, strong partnerships need to be developed between nonprofits, the private sector and the government to create meaningful and engaging content for the children. This can be achieved by broadening the parameters of PPP to encompass the teachers, students, and popular sociocultural bodies to help shape content. “

Special Needs Education needs considerable attention, requiring software

applications for speech and voice recognition based on Text to Speech Synthesis

and Automatic Speech Recognition in Indian languages. Random initiatives on a

small scale offer little succour to a large percentage of people with special needs.

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Conclusion

There are questions about the quality (Basu, 2006) and sustainability of random

government initiatives, implemented differently by different states and poorly aligned

to the needs of Indian industry. This has led to a “de-facto privatization” (Kapur &

Mehta) of ICT education in India with private institutions (such as Aptech and NIIT)

flourishing. Today in India, ICT education has become a lottery to success. Not every

one wins the lottery though.

Word Count (not including References): 4286 words

Page 15 of 24

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