Read the final version of the policy on ICTS in School Education
In January 2008, MHRD released a draft policy on ICTs in school education. This policy, created by a committee that included big businesses interested in the 'ICT in education' space was hugely problematic; in a way looking at education as a process of private sector training of public system teachers in its resources and models, creating labour force for the global economy.
Many educationists were uncomfortable with both the process and substance of this drafting and organised consultations on this policy, networked (the ict-education-india googlegroups was created for this) to build broad policy principles and positions, submitted several policy advocacy letters as well as substantive comments on the policy. Some of the network members met officials in MHRD and other institutions to explain how ICTs in education required a deep understanding of education, rather than of just technology.
In November 2008, the MHRD minister cancelled the privatised policy making process. The policy itself had three more drafts over the next 3 years - the second policy draft included many of our suggestions - education perspectives, focus on teacher education, support constructivist approaches to integrating ICTs in education, systemic integration rather than just hardware and software procurement, resource rich environment, FOSS etc, and was quite different from the first one. The fourth and final version, which further refines the second draft, was accepted by the Central Advisory Board of Education.