Saturday, 3 March 2012

Online education - Possible Solution to the dearth of Teachers in the Indian space ?


With the growing Population, comes the challenge for Governments of creating sufficient number of schools and an education system that can meet the challenges of providing sufficient avenues for future growth of the country. However, this is one challenge which is staring at the face of regulators. While there has been a lot efforts from Government, backed by considerable spend in sector, the concrete results are yet to figure out. While the basic education has been ensured in India under the Right to Education Act by the Indian Government, the level of education has remained BASIC, and considerable efforts need to be built in, if India has any chance to compete on the global landscape .

However, what is the reason for insufficient penetration of quality education across areas ? Is it money, is it lack of quality instructors.. If one were to consider the importance of education, obviously, every household in India today spends considerable piece of their overall spend on education. If one were to go by the long queues for tuitions outside the good teachers, one can easily estimate the premium that any good tutor demands in India. For these teachers, people are spending everything, even at times beyond there capacity. This is so for any and every area, be it Mathematics for CBSE Board, Mathematics for ICSE Board, English for ICSE or English for CBSE or MBA preparation for CAT, GMAT, MAT or  commerce courses like Chartered Accountancy, Company Secretary or ICWA. Well the list does not end here, entrance examination for professional course like IIT, JEE etc. are commanding better business valuation than the traditional brick and mortar companies, which have been here in India for generations.

The unfortunate part is that despite all these spends, we are SECOND ONLY TO ONE in the global arena, when it comes to quality of students.. The attached article sounds off the misery of a country, which is supposedly the Knowledge Super Power, which creates innumerable minds who have been instrumental in some of the best and biggest creations of this world http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/Indian-students-rank-2nd-last-in-global-test/articleshow/11492508.cmsFifteen-year-old Indians who were put, for the first time, on a global stage stood second to last, only beating Kyrgyzstan when tested on their reading, math and science abilities. India ranked second last among the 73 countries that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), conducted annually to evaluate education systems worldwide by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Secretariat. The survey is based on two-hour tests that half a million students are put through.

Amidst all this, one area, that seems to be promising to address the big gap is the space of online education. With the advent and growth of internet and broadband, and its penetration in the country, which connects even the remotest regions, online education can help bridge this gap. There are various models which are currently in form of online education , namely online e-learning portals, satellite classes. These are cost effective, time saving and ensure quality teachers availability to the people at distant places. With the growth of the e-learning segments, lot of free educational resources are available on internet on channels like YouTube, which provide, ease and continuity of access and can be low cost and effective. However, the acceptability of online education, unlike countries like US, UK and some of the other parts of the world is relatively low, but these are growing at scorching pace.

At www.iedubook.com. we have made a small effort to partly address the issue and supplement the already prevalent efforts of the Government and various agencies operating in the space . Through the help of various people who accessed our resources and became our Brand ambassadors, we have been motivated to do more and more for the society. Through this, an effort is made to supplement otherwise available resources for free virtual online education on the internet, some of whom includes some of the Top Universities from USA, the Khan Academy, run by the famous Mr. Salman Khan from USA and others.

Whether these resources can address the problem would be clear only with the passage of time. But if one were to only look at the need of education, and success in some of the other countries which have implemented online education, the only impact that these can bring to the society is POSITIVE.

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iEdubook is all about educating people, whether students, professionals, or individuals. be it in school studies, in Finance matters for life, your taxation, and everything else. Our repository, and growing user base at iEdubook.com is a testimony to this fact. This blog is contributed by Mr. Arinjay Kumar Jain, who is an Indian Chartered Accountant by profession, with more than 10 years of experience in Tax, Mergers & Acquisiton, Private equity investment structuring and other matters with firms like KPMG India and RSM.

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