Gurumurthy Kasinathan

In June 2021 Google and BYJU’S announced a partnership to provide education services in India. A press release from BYJU’S said, “the simplicity, flexibility, and security of Google ‘Workspace for Education’ and BYJU’S unmatched content pedagogy come together on the ‘Vidyartha’…

The National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP) begins with the assertion that education is fundamental for achieving full human potential, and for the development of an equitable and just society, thus emphasizing that education must aim at social transformation. Historically, Indian society has been afflicted by…

For-profit edtech needs to be banned, and the government must play an active regulatory role.

After a Congress member of Parliament from Tamil Nadu highlighted the unethical practices of the Indian edtech companies in Parliament, the Ministry of Education (MoE) issued an advisory. The advisory asked parents to “verify that content…

'Shiksha Vimarsh’ is a bimonthly Hindi magazine published by Digantar. It seeks to inform and engage its reader in discourse on a wide spectrum of issues related to contemporary educational thought and practice, policies, problems, case studies, researches and book reviews. Over the last 15 years, Shiksha Vimarsh has brought out a range of…

The pandemic has exposed India’s ambivalence about scientific knowledge. While masking and distancing constitute scientific wisdom, we see mass disregard of these in festivals and polls. The pandemic has exposed another ambivalence — about beliefs on the purpose and processes of education. Education experts’ views have sharply contrasted with…

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…

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.…

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.

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…

Visual Coding camp

One highlight of our work in the “Teachers Communities of Learning” program during 2019-20 was the camps conducted on visual programming at St Euphrasias Girls High School during January 2020. The objective was to strengthen STEM capabilities in the students, and we…

Translation is seen as a high-skilled professional activity, which restricts its reach. Three members of an NGO, that works with government schools, attempted to translate text from English to Kannada, using easily accessible digital tools; the NGO also supported teams of student-teachers and teachers to use these tools for translating…