Advocacy - ICT and Education

2021

School closures since March 2020 have allowed students limited opportunities for structured learning, causing learning loss, and aggravating malnutrition, child abuse, child labour, school dropout and early marriage.

Online education is seen as a solution to the education emergency. A survey conducted by Karnataka Education Department…

2021

The government is fiddling, as children are losing foundational literacy and numeracy. The Karnataka government has opened schools fully for grades 9-12 and partly for 6-8. However, lower primary schools (LPS) consisting of grades 1-5 remain closed and may have a zero year (a year of no school). Most states seem to favor keeping LPS closed.…

2021

IT for Change has drafted a statement, endorsed by a group of educationists and social work organizations, about the urgent need to open all primary schools to avoid a crisis of learning. Read it below:

1. The Karnataka education department has opened schools selectively. Classes 9-12 have regular classes, and 6-8 have intermittent…

2021

IT for Change put out a press release on January 26, 2021, about the urgent need to reopen all classes across all schools with local hygiene precautions in place. The statement, endorsed by a group of educationists and social work organizations, was covered by the New Indian Express. 

The day after the release of the statement, the…

2020

The report is a critical review of IFC investments in EdTech with recommendations to IFC, Union and state governments and civil society on EdTech funding, policy and program.

Executive Summary:

EdTech 1 in India got funding of 3.8 billion from venture capitalists in 2021 and has a future valuation of USD 30 billion. Accordingly, this…

2020

With the pandemic forcing the teaching and learning process to migrate to the online mode, the education system has faced an upheaval like never before. This has posed several challenges to teachers and students in India. V. Madhurima and Gurumurthy Kasinathan discuss the challenges and possible solutions in a conversation moderated by…

2020
Statement Issued by a Group of Educationists and Social Work Organizations Concerns Between lock-downs and relaxations, governments are trying to find the right balance between saving lives and keeping the economy going. A similar balance is essential in education as well. A very small percentage of students are able to connect to online…
2020

Schools and educational institutions have tended to use proprietary software applications: software that is not sold, but ‘licensed’, by the vendor. Here, the institution is only a ‘user’, and neither owns the software nor has any control over it. Over the last decade, however, the Indian public school and higher education systems have made…

2020

A virus may be apolitical but our response to it reveals biases and inequities in our systems. As we all adapt to the new “normal”, it is critical that we look at the stated and unstated assumptions, and implicit and explicit changes being made to our social welfare systems, which impact people differently.

Millions of children have been…

2017

Based on its experiences from research, curriculum design and field projects over the last decade, IT for Change made a submission to the National Education Policy 2017 Committee, on ICT integration in school education.

As general purpose technologies that affect basic processes of knowledge and communication, digital technologies (…