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How can we educate India?

India has very low literacy rate, and that is responsible for most of our social issues. With explosion of population, we have millions of uneducated people who can easily be manipulated. This is the reason we still see racial or religious issues taking front row in any election. Most of the people vote for caste and religion rather that candidate’s ability or development agenda. It’s not that they don’t want to, but due to lack of education or proper education, they just can’t judge the candidates based on merit. Similarly, honor killing, rape, dowry and all such social evils are also indirectly related to our education system. If you educate people from their childhood, and provide proper guidance abut such social evils, you should be able to minimize such problems, if not eradicate it. 

Our budget allocates less than 4% to Education sector. This is very less money to even take care of primary education in our vast country. Then we already have so many grants going out to the existing institutions from this money, reducing it further. We do need more money to be allocated to Education Sector, but till this is not happening, we have to get things done in this limited budget. 

Private sector schools are only targeting Tier A and B cities. They are not yet going to smaller towns. Villages are completely ruled out in their expansion map. Even in major cities, we still have less number of schools than it is required. 

So, we have a major problem in hand, and our government does not have enough resources to take care of this problem. What should we do?

The problem


Let’s understand the problem first. What are the reasons for lack of education in majority of places in our country? 
- Lack of schools in various parts of country. 
- Lack of good teachers in various schools, including Government Schools. 
- High fee structure in good / private schools
- High cost of maintaining school
- Cost of books, notebook etc for low income families. 

The solution should be cost effective and scalable. It should be cheap enough to accommodate the low budgetary allocation, and scalable enough to implement it from one classroom to every classroom in country. In fact, it should be scalable enough to go beyond the classroom, as we do not have schools in many part of our country. 

The solution I am thinking is software. Software is mostly designed keeping these two things in mind, cost and scalability. Cost is the reason we are getting so many outsourced orders from western countries. But just making software does not make sense here in this context. So, let me explain in details.

Scenario 1


You have a classroom full of students and a teacher. The same classroom is also connected to multiple different classrooms across the country, where students are watching live video feed and listening to the teacher. They can always raise their hand by pushing a button. Teacher will clarify their doubt like any other student physically present in class. The coordinators in distance classrooms are responsible to manage the feeds, discipline, sending signal that students want clarification etc. Examination also happens the same way, no physical printed question papers. The question set will be displayed on the screen, and student will answer them on answer sheet. The answer sheets will be scanned and sent for verification. 

This scenario is possible even today, and we don’t have to wait for government to do something here. The existing private schools should be able to start their remote centers with class coordinators to exploit the benefit of existing technology. This is technically possible even today. All you need to do is use Internet for video conference like feature. Many corporate are using this technology to save travel cost and time. This is basically a business opportunity for private schools where they can expand the network with less cost as they don’t need to hire highly qualified teachers in these remote centers. With their brand name, and assurance that some of the best teachers from major cities are conducting classes, it is a lucrative option for parents to enroll their kids into such schools. This will increase the number of student per teacher, and has its own challenges, but nothing which cannot be sorted out with proper planning and execution.

Scenario 2


Small education centers equipped with audio/video system and good quality educational software covering all chapters and topics. The software should be made with the help of good quality teachers from country, consist of their lectures and animated plus real audio-video clips to explain the topics to students. The quality of such educational software should be of top class, ensuring that its easy enough to understand, and provide complete details. Additional Q&A session after each video is arranged with prominent teachers with help from voice only or video conference, whichever is possible. All such Q&A sessions are recorded, and can be used locally to provide answers if the question asked is already answered in some other sessions or some other center. Examination paper will be sent to the remote centers digitally and displayed on the screen for students. Answer sheets will be scanned and sent for verification. 

This is possible, and some of the schools are already taking advantage of software assisted teaching in classroom. But the same concept is taken and implemented in an entirely different scenario, where teacher will be replaced by software based sessions. This is more cost effective than Scenario 1 as most of the session is offline. This will ensure that quality of education is same across places. Also, as it is mostly offline, a portable school can be created to take this at the doorstep of remote places. One portable school can be used to teach 5 or 6 remote village as it can travel through them conducting sessions. This can be a joint activity between Government and NGOs to promote education throughout India.

Scenario 3


Taking the scenario 2 a bit ahead, making all the audio-video content online and offline available for students and parents all across. This will ensure that anyone with a mobile can access online content or get offline DVD/memory card / Pen drive / Download of these to access it at their choice of place. This is taking education to their home and making it affordable. This could be made available on memory card to be used with mobile, pen drive or even the low cost DVDs which can be played on a cheap DVD player. Examinations can be conducted at specific places with help from IGNOU or some other organization. NGOs can also help in conducting examination at various remote places. 
With availability of online and offline content, this can also boost the adult education scenario in India. People can study in private, at their own pace, and their own time. 

Today, we have many such options available, both online and offline. There is a TAB by iBall which comes pre-loaded with educational content valid for one year. Similarly, there are numerous web based learning software, each with offline content available. Some sell their PC based offline content; some even sells Video based DVD for offline content. We do need to do a quality evaluation of these contents and validate if any of these fits for complete offline learning purpose. Most of these are meant to be used as additional learning tool, and not for replacing traditional classroom sessions. So, we may have to develop such software, and that requires major task. Good news in this field is that there are many such initiatives already in place like Khan Academy which can be used in preparation of such software. This takes time and effort to create such library, but once created, the use is many folds.

Scenario 4


Our Doordarshan can run multiple free to air TV channels, broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. One channel for each class and programs are classroom sessions. The program will start with teachers taking sessions like actual school. It will follow school like routine for different periods for different subjects. There will be recess in between for lunch etc. Each day is numbered like Day 1, 2 etc., to follow a normal school calendar. For example, channel for Class 6 will start its normal day of school at 8AM in the morning. Let’s say it will go on till 2PM, and one day of school is over. It will start repeat telecast of same session from 2PM onward. So, the same one school day will be shown 3-4 times a day. As Saturday and Sunday are school off days, it will be used to repeat all weekdays again. If someone missed a day or sessions, they can catch-up in weekend with repeat telecast. You can have homework given just like school, and next day, the answers of homework questions can be explained by teacher. The students can verify their homework themselves. School like exams can be held with help from NGOs or IGNOU. 

This again is extension of Scenario 3, where we are asking to broadcast the learning material on TV. This is already done in a limited fashion by IGNOU, as they have their own TV channel. But here the proposal is to run it like proper school, so that anyone following it can feel the connect. This may not yield immediate results, but it will ensure that the education is available right in the living room of anyone wants to learn. This will help lots of family who has multiple kids and cannot afford school expenses. Plus, the girl child education will also be improved with this initiative. Even if someone doing the study and not appearing for exams, at least the education is getting spread.

Conclusion


There are various other options or scenarios we can discuss here. But the main thing in all such scenarios is Software. We do need to create content which can stand out and substitute the actual classroom sessions. Once the contents are ready, there could be many ways to deliver that content, including the scenarios explained above. We do have lots of good teachers, and there could be NGOs as well as schools who can help government in creating these contents. 

There were some announcement similar to digital content made last year by CBSE, but nothing came out after that. They may be working on this, but not sure if that is going to be a standalone module or just coaching module to be used for additional studies after school. The need of the hour is standalone modules, which can substitute school sessions. 

I have not seen may online study materials, but can recommend KHAN ACADEMY for math. It starts from very basic and goes on to the advance topics. There is a flow chart which shows what you need to study next and take you there. 

Similarly, I came across another website, http://www.extraminds.com, which sells DVD of its offline study content. There are many others with similar offer. What makes it unique is that they have recorded topic wise sessions with actual teachers. So, each video are 5-10 minutes only, covering specific topic from chapters in CBSE or ICSE. I don’t think they are perfect, but it’s one step in right direction. 

But these are smaller initiatives, and our Government need to combine these efforts into one bigger effort to get the goal achieved. Our goal is to provide education to every child, and if we are equipped with proper means like content, we should be able to fulfill our goal. 

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