The Digital Over Promise

Context: Pandemic induced education crisis paves the way for comprehensive implementation of online/digital education initiatives.

Challenges to the Digital Education: The following constraints hinders the delivery of promises made under the New Education Policy.

• Low Education Expenditure: The NEP allocates 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education, but is unclear over how and when the goal is expected to be achieved.
• In 2020-2021, the government spent only 3.2% of GDP on education, down from 4.14% in 2014- 2015.
• Implementation issues due to COVID: For E.g. The migrant labour crisis was a recent example of our challenges in execution.
• National Optical Fibre Network is still not completely operational after almost 8 years.
• Limited accessibility to inline mode of education will adversely impact the marginalised, rural and poor populations.
• Only about 25% of Indian households have access to internet facility (while rural households stands at 15%).
• Limited digital infrastructure/resources in terms of appropriate platforms, technology, tools, interactivity, curation, content and a lot more. 
• Government schools and colleges do not have the resources to provide digital education. 
• Lack of a proper policy on digital education, infrastructure and multiple languages.
• Challenges for the parents in terms of fees for data services, uninterrupted broadband connectivity, adequate space and digital discipline.
• Curation and mentoring challenge for teachers, who are presently trained to teach and not mentor. 
• No mention of leveraging existing infrastructure:
• While the National Knowledge Network exist to promote collaboration through digital connectivity, on a few institution take advantage of it due to:

• Lack of understanding and technical expertise.
• Lack of local facilities and funding

Government Initiatives for Digital Education 

• National Knowledge Network (NKN) was established as a high bandwidth, low latency network to connect all knowledge-creating organisations.
• Encourages collaborative development and building of repository of knowledge in all fields. 
• Lack of understanding, local facilities, funding and technical expertise limits its usage.
• National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN- Bharat Network) : as a part of National information Infrastructure (NII). – to address the shortage of quality teachers.
• Free 100 Mbps to 1Gbps bandwidth was planned at each panchayat under it.
• Use of Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund: to build NOFN has countered the challenge of lack of private telecom investment due to lack of profitability. 
• National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has experimented on the use of Information Technology (IT) in panchayat schools to synchronise present teacher-centric education and IT-based teaching.
• Previous impacts of NKC (2004-2009): Emphasis on Expansion, Excellence and Equity.

• Over 900 universities including IITs and IIMs were built.
• Increased funding for education in 11th five-year plan.
• Passage of Right to Education Bill.

Way Forward: Leveraging the existing architecture -

• Relook at the NOFN (BBNL) and make it a core component of the Digital India initiative 
• Leverage NOFN to provide e-services at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
• Digitally connect all schools and improve the digital education ecosystem using NOFN and NKN.
• NOFN and NKN was built as an IT-based teaching system to address the shortage of quality teachers and school infrastructure. 

Conclusion: The transition from teacher-class based teaching to digital-education will need multipronged efforts over time.

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Quotes

“Digital India” is not prepared for digital education.
Plan for the worst and hope for the best