Friday, April 19, 2013

Virtual Open Schooling: A Model for India

On 15th March 2013 I gave a keynote speech "Virtual Open Schooling: A Model for India" at the International Conference Education for All: Role of Open Schooling, organised by The National Institute of Open Schooling (from 13th -15th March 2013) at New Delhi.


The Government of India is aware of the strong and urgent need to make secondary education within easy reach, affordable and of good quality. There are certain measures that can be adopted to bring quality, equity and access for every child. Schools can be upgraded; their capacity to serve students expanded, creating new schools, and increasing GDP allocated to secondary schools are some of them. However, these require heavy investments in terms of infrastructure and finances. Adoption of ICT tools and an increased shift towards open distance and electronic education can improve quality and increase efficiency. Although there are various schemes in place, it is estimated that the demand for secondary education is going to increase sharply due to increased turnover of students from primary level (like the success obtained via Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme). Going virtual is one of the solutions. This presentation looked into the aspect of increasing demand for access to education in the context of Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhijan (RMSA), meeting the educational needs by Open Schooling system, emerging trends in ICT use in education and proposes a Model for Virtual Open Schooling in India.

You can watch the presentation here: