The Department of Primary and Secondary Education has taken over the tele-education project, which until recently was being run by an Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB)-led consortium.
The project will be rolled out to participating schools under an existing EduSat programme, which is run by the Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT).
The tele-education project was rolled out in 2014 with the aim of improving the quality of education in 1,000 upper primary and high schools in rural areas. However, the government decided to terminate the project as the department had found that it was facing technical and implementation hurdles.
The decision was taken based on a third-party evaluation by the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) which had recommended that the project be discontinued. The report had stated that there was “no robust evidence of improvement in learning outcomes”. It went on to note that the project was operating only in 220 of the 1,000 government schools on account of issues pertaining to broadband connectivity.
Gopal Naik, professor at IIMB who headed the project, said they were returning all the equipment in working condition back to the department.
A senior official with the Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT) said they had received the equipment of more than 500 schools to date. The DSERT will extend the existing EduSat programme to the 1,000 schools. Under the EduSat programme, students learn from pre-recorded videos beamed from the DSERT studio.
However, senior officials admitted that this may not be the ideal solution, either. “Although the department terminated the project with IIMB, the EduSat programme is not particularly contributing to improvement in learning outcomes. But the department ended the contract with IIMB as it was draining its finances,” an official of the Department of Public Instruction said.
