Offline/Target Market/India

From Strategic Planning

India – education landscape


Internet access in India

  • Total population: 1.2B (July 2010 estimate, CIA World Factbook)
  • Total students: >290M[1]
    • Primary school enrollment: 95% of children
    • Secondary school enrollment: 40% of adolescents
    • Out of school children: 8M[2]
  • Total Schools: 1.2M [3]
  • Internet users/Penetration: 81M / 7%

Primary needs

According to the World Bank, the secondary educational system has the following key needs:

  • Expansion (currently only reaches 40% of youth)
  • Curriculum and teaching practices upgrading
  • Expansion of public-private partnerships (60% of secondary schools are privately managed in India)

Governance

Schools have a vast array of stakeholders, including:

  • 35 state boards (covering 604 districts)
  • 2 central boards
  • Other educational agencies

A National Policy on ICT in Education was recently which is planned to install computer labs in 100,000 public schools by 2013.[4]

Partnership possibilities

Education sector

  • Educomp
  • Edurite
  • IBM
  • Designmate
  • IL&FS Education and Technology Services
  • CORE Technologies

National Level education

  • Azim Premji Foundation
  • Quest Alliance
  • American India Foundation
  • Global e-Schools and Communities Initiatives (GeSCI)
    • Implementing the Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI)
  • DEF
    • Gyanpedia interactive and collaborative portal with Media Lab Asia: comprehensive, multilingual, dynamic virtual platform for countrywide content exchange
  • NIIT Technologies
    • Strategic alliance with US-based Ncomputing beginning in 2007[5]
      • Used by Andhra Pradesh Government in 2008[6]
      • Reduces computing costs by 50%
    • Headquarters: Guragon & New Delhi, India
    • Two branches:
      • NIIT Limited: education centers providing classroom and on-line learning solutions (>100 edu centers in China & other Asia-Pacific)
      • NIIT Technologies: IT services arm, providing IT software

Local education initiatives

  • New Horizons / North Eastern Council (Mizoram, NE India)
  • Khulja Sim Sim (Delhi)

Other Government initiatives

NeGP goal of establishing 1000,000 Common Service Centers in 600K villages[7]


Notes/References

  1. “Towards a national policy on ICT in School Education in India” [1]
  2. Education in India,” World Bank.
  3. “Towards a national policy on ICT in School Education in India” [2]
  4. Vital Consulting, “Affordable Computing for Schools in India,” 2008.
  5. Economic Times, “NIIT Ncomputing Inc ink pact to provide low-cost computers,” 6 Nov., 2007 [3]
  6. [ http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Andhra-Pradesh-Government-Selects-NComputing-Provide-18-Lakh-Schoolchildren-With-Computing-909126.htm Marketwire], 13 Oct., 2008
  7. Kazi, Seyed S. and Osama Manzar, “Digital Review of Asia Pacific 2009–2010 .in’ India.”