India’s education system has shown improvement, with the literacy rate rising from 64.9% in 2001 to 73% in 2011, with a further 5.07% increase from 2011 to 2018, taking India’s literacy rate up to 74.37% . However, with a growing population and the right to education being fundamental, the country still grapples with numerous educational challenges. The emerging field of digital learning holds potential to address these issues and unlock the full potential of Indian students. Despite the hurdles, India is tirelessly working to enhance its education sector.
Digital education is using digital technologies and tools to enhance teaching and learning outcomes. It can include online courses, interactive platforms, multimedia content, gamified learning, artificial intelligence, machine learning and more.
Digital education has the potential to transform the Indian education system by addressing some of the key challenges that it faces, such as access, quality, equity, relevance and innovation. One of the key features of NEP 2020, which aims to transform the Indian education system, is the recognition of the importance and potential of digital education in enhancing access, quality, equity, relevance and innovation in education.
In this article, we will discuss how digital education can solve the five biggest educational challenges faced by India, based on the latest data, facts and figures.
Challenge 1: Digital Divide
The digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to digital devices and internet connectivity and those who do not. According to a report by IAMAI and Nielsen, only 45% of India’s population had internet access as of November 2020, with a huge disparity between urban (67%) and rural (31%) areas.
This means that more than half of the population is excluded from the benefits of digital education. This poses a major obstacle to NEP’s vision and goals of enabling access, quality, equity, relevance and innovation in education.
Solution
Digital Libraries in Schools
With CSR & Govt initiatives focussing on providing basic infrastructure and introducing initiatives such as Digital Libraries (or Smart ICT Labs) in schools that are aligned with recommendations under the revised ICT Policy, the challenge posed due to lack of infrastructure can be overcome at scale. Digital Libraries with learning tablets that work without the internet, also come with charging racks. The tablets are pre-loaded with learning content and can work for up to 8 hours a day without charging. The charging racks are in a trolley that can easily move from one room to another.
This adds to flexibility in case there is a limitation of the number of classrooms and also removes electricity dependence. Digital Libraries typically come with an integration to learning plans as per the school curriculum, best suited to compliment learning and making it effective. Students can have access to their own profiles, and a teacher’s dashboard allows teachers to keep a track of learning of their students. Digital Libraries are also replacing traditional libraries as these labs can host a rich collection of books apart from content related to school curriculum.
Challenge 2: Low Enrolment Rates, Drop-outs and Low Attendance
It has been found that there is still a gap in enrolment rates in Government Schools, especially in secondary schools, where nationally, the enrolment rate is 72.8% as per UDISE 2021-22 data. Schools in India also struggle with low attendance and drop outs. Government and Civil Society Organizations are working to overcome these challenges.
Solution
Enriching and Engaging Learning Content
Most of the students in rural areas have a natural affinity of Android devices/smartphones, As per Vishal Goswamy, Head – Growth & Outreach at iDream Education, an organization that works to bring digital learning to last-mile K-12 learners, learning Tablets based learning, Smart Classes and Digital Libraries show an increase in interest levels of students. This is because learning is more interactive and easier. With content ranging from curriculum, to videos, practice assessments, notes, students find these mediums to be more engaging and gratifying.
Challenge 3: Historical Learning Gap of Previous Years
Global Sustainable Goal 4, also a goal for India is to ensure inclusive and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. India faces challenges in quality and these reflect in ‘the Learning Gap’. This trend is clearly visible in the Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2022. Historical Learning Gaps pose a major challenge where most Government school students are 2-4 grades lower than their current grades in terms of Learning Levels.
Another challenge is to make quality learning content available in different languages (India has 22 languages and multiple state boards). Standardizing quality content and consolidating in different languages is a mammoth task and a challenge posed in front of the Indian Education System.
Solution
Providing Personalized & Adaptive Learning Solutions and Proactive Mentoring by Teachers
Learning applications that are accessible to teachers to take Smart Classes, and students to practice through Digital Libraries, and tablets make standardized education available to all. K-12 EdTech organizations consolidate different state board curriculums and make these available in different language mediums. There are also efforts being made as per the State and National Curriculum Framework and State Governments to improve the situation with digital content, using state-of-the-art pedagogies, content types that include videos, practicals, notes, ebooks, assessments, and animated content that makes learning joyful and universal.
Personalized Adaptive Learning as a solution can help solve this problem by empowering students to cover up their historical learning gaps in a joyful, guided and non judgemental personalized environment. Personalized Adaptive Learning through Tablets has already been adopted by some State Governments and is a direct solution to bridge the learning gap.
Challenge 4: Gender Disparity
India traditionally has been a patriarchal society. A lot of initiatives have been taken by the Government in recent years to fix Gender Disparity. However, the challenge posed in front of the India Education System is to overcome the legacy effect of gender inequality that presents a significant part of the Girl Child population not attending school regularly, and being in the fold of household duties and susceptibility to early marriages.
As of April 2021, just over 20 percent of female children between the ages of 15 and 19 in India completed at least 12 years of schooling.
Solution
Public-Private Partnership for Girl Child Empowerment & Education Initiatives
CSR, NGOs, Government, Civil Society organizations are working to remove the gender disparity at the grassroot level. While communities and parents struggle with allowing girls to travel to schools and also continue their education in higher classes, digital learning can bring the best of education to their homes. There will have to be more focus on this and special digital education programmes for Girl Children such as the Bharat Ed Tech Initiative (where 6000 rural Girl Students in UP were recently offered the iPrep Learning App with mentoring support and usage analytics), will have to be the ‘new world order’ to increase engagement of Girl Children and bringing them into the fold of Education through Digital Learning Access.
The project was a perfect example of empowerment of the girl child and girl child education and more such initiatives are needed to combat the multi-level challenge posed to Girl Child Education in India.
Challenge 5: Measuring Progress and Learning Outcomes
How do we measure progress and result of the initiatives taken as per the vision and goals of NEP 2020 and UN SDGs cited above in this article? One key challenge that comes from planning and implementing Education for a country of the size and population of India is how to measure and what to measure. Unless there is a centralized repository and standard metrics for measuring learning outcomes, it is virtually impossible to have a standardized yardstick to measure impact and present impact.
Solution
Digital Monitoring & Reporting of Data
Digital Learning enables the tracking of usage seamlessly. These systems extract usage data of students and teachers and put them into a central repository that can be visualized into a dashboard and also integrated with Government databases (UDISE+ for example) or other databases through API integration. If CSRs and NGOs adopt centralized reporting of their work and integrate it with the Government’s database, significant measurement of outcomes is possible. Irrespective, attendance rates, performance of students, assessments (before and after the programme) are also sharp indicators of outcomes of programmes that aim for bringing impact in Education.
Conclusion
Digital education is a powerful tool that can transform the Indian education system by solving some of the biggest challenges that it faces. However, it also requires careful planning, implementation, and evaluation to ensure that it is inclusive, effective and sustainable for all stakeholders. By addressing the critical challenges of Infrastructure, attendance, quality, gender disparity and measurement, digital education can unlock the potential of millions of learners across India.
(Copy Right @ India CSR)
