Milind Shah,
CEO, WishTel

Tablets facilitate personalised learning, by enabling students to access information in a quick and seamless manner

WishTel, a young and dynamic company aiming to bridge the technological gap in the education industry, is the maker of IRA tablet.  Today, IRA is being regarded as a worthy product for donning the mantle of Aakash 2, the government’s low cost computer project.  For WishTel, the journey from building prototypes to commercial models has been very exciting. Today the company possesses in- depth expertise and experience with real time embedded systems and development tools. It is fully capable of building an ecosystem  of highly integrated hardware and software for Tablet PCs and multimedia boxes.
We have implemented a pilot project on digital education in Maharashtra. This project is giving us an overview of how implementation  of tablets in schools actually works at the ground level. It is a pathshala where we have implemented this project. Here, many students  had the first time experience with an entire digital eco system.
Tablets facilitate personalised learning, as they enable students to access information in a quick and seamless manner.

Sucheta B Phadke,
Senior Vice President, Core Education & Technologies Ltd

The problem in education today is lack of integrated and holistic approach

While speaking about fostering innovation in education, we should look at the challenges that are being faced by the education system.  These challenges are due to limited infrastructure, shortage of teachers and quality of teaching. The dropout rate of students is alarming and at the same time we have millions of youth who want quality education which can help them in getting employment.
On one hand there are new ways of teaching with digital classrooms and on the other hand there is poorly designed content for this technology. The problem here is of a lack of integrated and holistic approach for changing pedagogy to epedagogy.
The human element in learning is always going to be around, but we have to look at blended models of learning in an integrated fashion  to be able to inspire minds and transform lives.
Learning can happen in students when we promote curiosity, problem solving, critical thinking, high order thinking and collaborative  learning. So the question we need to ask is how can we create collaborative learning platforms for teachers and students? How are we  going to blend technology with hands on learning to help the children practice efficiently? How can we enhance the learning delivery  through innovative access to devices?
Children are inquisitive by nature, but instead of feeding them formulas and killing their creativity, the learning solution design should  be innovative enough to facilitate building of skills for observation, comparison, expression, interest, imagination, reasoning, clarity of thoughts, and freedom of expression.
The teacher has to act as facilitator and friend to help the child in discovering his or her potential for creativity.

Sushma Berlia,
President, Apeejay Stya & Svran Group and Chancellor Apeejay Stya University

Innovation needs organised chaos for fostering change

Innovation is something that leads to the creation of new ways of life. It inspires us to transform our mental makeup and create values. We need to have an ecosystem, which can act as a principle catalyst for fostering rapid innovation. These innovations are the  fountainhead of large scale successful institutions. India faces unique challenges in the field of education like in the board school  education, vocational education and higher education. These problems can only be addressed through our own ecosystem for  innovation. The innovations must be allowed to grow from ideas to implementation.
If we take into context the post industrial knowledge economy, the most critical factors that drive these economies towards a sustainable future is research innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovation therefore reposes heavy responsibilities on the educational sector of the economy for fostering innovative research and reaching newer frontiers of knowledge.
The need of the hour is fostering of an innovative culture that facilitates meeting the educational needs and goals for a sustainable economic development. Innovation needs organised chaos and this means that we need not have a top down instructional mode,  rather a system of broad guidelines and the freedom to apply one’s mind will lead to best results. The performance has to be measured by flexible tools, plans and goals.

Ashutosh Chadha,
Director, Corporate Affairs Group, South Asia, Intel

Better education leads not only to higher individual incomes, it also contributes to a nation’s long-term economic growth

Now we have access to a range of new technologies that offer fantastic creative opportunities to teachers who wish to use innovative  ways for furthering learning outcomes. The school leaders are open to new ideas, they are positively keen to foster the dynamism and  creativity in the learning process. There exists vast untapped potential for fast forwarding progress by getting another billion or two of  today’s bright minds hooked into the networks that are already allowing ideas to flow in novel ways.
Today innovation is not really restricted to organisations, and it is not restricted to countries, it actually flows down towards students  through the medium of an unstoppable digital river. However, the advancements in technology are so incredibly fast that we cannot always be assured of a positive outcome. It is easy to be led astray in a world that is full of so many devices and solutions. Perhaps, it is true that in advancing the way our society in particular has, we have backed ourselves in a corner in more ways than one. We have to relook at the innovations in our education system.

The power of education
The rapid growth of China, India, Brazil and other emerging powers has dramatically altered the complexion of the global economy in recent years. Better education leads not only to higher in-dividual income, it is also a necessary, although not always sufficient,  precondition for long-term economic growth.
The tech sector plays a leading role in the economic boom of the nations. It fuels the Internet and the many technologies associated  with it. Likewise, the subsequent ‘tech bust’ is identified as a key contributor to the national recession. The production of high-tech  goods represents a significant component of GDP.
We generally assume that the level of education in the society is a determining factor in the level of advancement, but the empirical evidence for the same does not exist. The connection between education and material prosperity can be regarded as hazy, at the most.  The success of knowledge based systems lies in the quality and extent of the knowledge available to the system. Acquiring and validating large groups of consistent, correlated knowledge, is not a trivial task to achieve.

HE Dr A K Jugessur,
High Commissioner of Mauritius

We have to strive to make knowledge-based society a reality so that incidences of digital divide vanish from society

Development of education is of critical importance for ensuring societal transformation. Every generation of thinkers, has considered education to be a fulcrum for change.
The 21st century faces many new challenges. These challenges can only be resolved when the educational institutions develop the  capacity to operate in a knowledge driven society. Knowledge lies in transforming teachers from a content, transmission mode into  mediators of knowledge.
Students no longer have only teachers and schools as primary source of information. Information is now becoming accessible to all through TV, Radio, Newspapers, DVDs, Internet, and Mobile Technologies.
However, we also need to keep in mind that in the field of education, even more important than the technology is the implementation of the technology. It is important that we plan a process. Countries should carefully choose the model to expand the education. What has worked in other locations may not necessarily be suitable in our own developing nations.
Training of our teachers is as important as having latest computers, because it is the teachers who are going to teach the students.
The teachers have to be empowered and given the means to successfully implement a digitisation process. Miracles cannot be  expected from the existing education system, if teachers are not fully trained, and the basic infrastructure like electricity is not here.

Prof Parvin Sinclair,
Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)

Of around 13 lakh teachers across the country, many are only partially trained, and yet they continue to teach as we face shortage of teachers

Every one of us had at least one teacher who we can look up to; this could be the teacher who ignited our minds with the desire of  learning. We have to ensure that every child in the country has access to such teachers. The Right to Education Act was introduced in  2010. We could have been close to achieving the goal of universal education, if we had access to good quality teachers.

Lack of teacher training
Of the around 13 lakh teachers across the country, many are not properly trained for teaching. Despite not being fully trained for the  profession, they are doing it because we are in need of teachers. There are several malpractices in the system. The semi-trained and  un-trained people are hired with the thought that they will catch up with time and that catching up rarely happens. We have come up  with the teacher education scheme of 630 crores which is far short of what we need. We can leverage different methods of open and  distance learning, which we really have to. In a country like this that is the only answer. Some universities care about quality, some  universities don’t. So how do we monitor that carefully?
One has to go to the field and live with the people in the rural areas. Most educators have not done this. If you look at national  curricular framework that the NCERT is developing, you will find that we are opting for a very constructivist way of learning and  teaching in a classroom. This kind of a system represents a sea change in the way think. But making it part of the school education  system is a key challenge. The teachers, the teacher educators, the parents, the administrators, understand the requirements of  constructivism. , This method of teaching grants more time to the learner to deal with each concept in his or her own way. But the  system also requires flexibility of a certain kind. It requires an individualisation of the process in which the education is being  imparted.

Changing the education system
It is imperative to bring changes in the way we provide learning to our students. Open  learning allows that, but it requires a certain background, a certain maturity, a certain framework of thinking and working.
We also  need to understand that if vocational education is only for profession, or is it for something more. Most of us have noticed that the world is becoming less humanist. So does that have something to do with the quality of our education and kind of areas that  are left out in even professional education space? For instance, liberal arts are left out completely and so is a subject like moral science.
Inclusion is also very crucial. When the RTE Act was first framed we left out the disability sector, which was corrected subsequently.  However, it needs a lot more thinking, doing and caring by all concerned. It is so inspiring to see people, who are eager to get into the  educational mainstream. They positively want to be a part of everything. We need to look at some ways of bringing them in. Each of us  is disabled in some way or the other. Education is for living, for sharing, for growing, for culture, and for civilisation. We simply can’t  afford to put it aside.

R P Sissodia,
Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education,
Ministry of Human Resource

Now, the government also believes that innovation is the latest currency of economic power

The challenges that India faces, today, are unique to the world. Huge divide exists in different parts of the country in terms of GER, and  quality, etc. For instance, on the one hand there is 50 percent GER in regular urbanised group, while on the other, in remote areas there is a no question of GER as there are no institutions. Similarly, we have IITs which are accepted worldwide for employment; but  on the flip side we have colleges and schools that do not have basic facilities. There is an urgent need to reconcile these disparities.
There is a pre-conceived notion that inclusion can only be attained at the expense quality. Excellence and strategies of bringing equity and inclusion have to compromise with quality. While we aim to achieve excellence but it should not be at the cost of the rural student,  who does not have access to resources. These are formidable challenges, which need to be overcome.
Today India has become land of destination. Many foreign universities are setting up campuses in India. Again there is a policy  dilemma on granting permission on the set up of foreign universities in India.
Further, as far as research and development and innovations are concerned, this decade has been declared as the decade of innovation. Now, the government also believes that innovation is the latest currency of economic power. India will become an emerging superpower if it really exploits the potential that exists. India would be the world leader in research and development and innovation. In ICT, there are a lot of approaches that the government is adopting and. ICT is certainly one of the most important and crucial factors  that add to quality. We must utilise the ICT tools that are available at our command and ensure that the education sector utilises ICT solutions. However, it is also important to note that ICT or eLearning is not a substitute or replacement of quality classroom learning. It only enhances the teaching-learning process and supplements the quality. It does not supplant the whole education system.

N K Sinha,
Additional Secretary (TEL), Technical Education, Department of Secondary & Higher

The huge information gap between the employers and students needs to be bridged

We are deliberating on excellence, inclusion and outreach to arrive at strategies for steering the education sector. But what other  improvements can we make once the targets related to Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) are achieved?
The fact is that unless quality of the higher education is enhanced, gains from higher GER will be rather limited. So how do we tackle these problems?
In 2009, a sum of one billion dollars was sanctioned for the National Mission on Education through ICT. The aim of the mission was to  look at those who cannot be a part of the inclusion even through the digital resource.
Low cost access to devices is given to students who lack the financial resources for procuring them on their own. The government of  India also has something similar to Coursera that many of us have not even heard of. The National Program on Technology Enhance  and Learning (NPTEL) has 1, 200 semester courses across various engineering disciplines. Professors from Indian Institute of  Technology and Indian Institute of Science and various other engineering colleges have developed the content. We have been doing  our silent contribution using Indian tax payers’ money. SHAKSHAT portals are providing free educational content to everyone.
The cardinal principle of National Mission on Education through ICT is to provide free content to every learner and to see that Indian  talent does not go waste. To ensure efficient learning, we strive to integrate efficient pedagogy and outcome-based learning into the contents.
We want to give our students (in higher education domain) a plethora of choices of learning various subject modules. We need to motivate them through continuous evaluation. Once talent has been identified in a particular area, the students have to be handed over to special mentor groups for further training.

Sandeep Aneja,
Managing Director, Kaizen Private Equity

The huge information gap between the employers and students needs to be bridged

Education is revolutionising very fast. We have achieved a lot, and we can achieve even more by embracing technology in education.  It is understood that most people don’t understand technology or don’t have access to it. However, the growth in companies in India that provide test, tutoring and other online services is mindboggling to us as investors.
India can not only catch up with the Western world, it can even beat the advanced countries in the digital space. For instance, there is a company called Coursera in which Stanford Professors have uploaded a lot of their courses online and made them entirely free.  Hundreds and thousands of students signed up. If you take the same course in a normal brick and mortar university, it will take you  decades to serve that many students. With digital technology, you can serve a hundred thousand students in a matter of hours.
An online course like that of Coursera allows one to not only test the attitude of a student, but also test their analytical ability by monitoring the pace at which one is learning.
About a million students pass out from engineering colleges and IITs each year. 85 percent of them wait for 9 to 10 months to bag a job. On the other hand, employers are also in search for employable talent. There are jobs. There are people. But there is huge information gap between employers and students. This gap needs to be bridged as soon as possible.
It is time for us to embrace the global digital revolution in education and catch up with the rest of the world. And India has a chance to not only catch up, but also beat the world in that space. We have to take the digital path, because India cannot afford to build enough  brick and mortar institutions.

Ashok Thakur,
Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India

We have overtaken USA, when it comes to number of students in higher education

This year is very crucial in terms of planning our next five years. As the 12th five year plan is being implemented, we must also look  back at the experiences of the 11th five year plan. Our ministry conducted a higher education survey, which was the first ever  institution based survey, in which we got data from almost 400 universities.
We have information on almost about 30 percent of the 30,000 odd colleges. Based on that, we conclude that we are on course as far  as GER is concerned. Now we can say that we have overtaken USA in terms of number of students in higher education sector. USA has  19.5 million students in higher education; whereas India has already crossed the 20 million mark. China is the number one.
India’s achievement of this milestone, primarily was possible because of the rate at which our economy was growing. There was demand for jobs and students opted to go. However, the not so glamorous part is that the quality of most graduates and engineers we produce is poor. So all our efforts in the 12th five year plan by and large will go towards addressing the issue of quality. We spend  about three per cent of our GDP whereas it should ideally be about six percent. Out of this 1.12 percent we spend on higher education, the target should be more than 1.50 percent.
The 11th five year plan recorded a nine times increase in the budget allocation, something that was never done before. We made eight more IITs on the top of the existing seven, we made seven more IIMs against the six IIMs that we already have. In the 12th five year plan, we need to build up on this value. To address faculty development we have to propose a national teachers’ mission and we plan to spend the sizeable amount of money on it. Sixth pay commission has greatly improved the salary of the teaching community.
As a whole, we now want to build further on that and while doing this we will engage all the institutions, we intend to engage not only the premier institutions like IITs, IIMs, but all the universities.