Education Department decides to scrap tele-education project

The Department of Primary and Secondary Education has decided to scrap its tele-education project, carried out by a Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB)-led consortium, which was aimed at improving the quality of education in upper primary and high schools in rural areas.

The decision was taken earlier this week after the department learnt that the project was facing technical and implementation hurdles. In March 2018, The Hindu had reported on the decision of the department to extend the project to more schools with computer facilities despite the hurdles.

Although the department had entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to carry out the project for a period of five years, the department decided to end this project as the performance was found to be ‘not satisfactory’. With this move, the ₹84 crore project, which was rolled out in November 2014, will not be implemented from the 2018-2019 academic year.

A third-party evaluation by the Azim Premji Foundation (APF) last year had also recommended that the project be discontinued. It had stated that there was ‘no robust evidence of improvement in learning outcomes’. It was also found that the project was operating only in 220 of the total 1,000 government schools that had been selected on account of issues pertaining to broadband connectivity.

The evaluation report had also pointed out that an analysis and comparison of April 2016 and April 2017 showed only a marginal improvement in some subjects and grades. However, the IIMB-led consortium had claimed that the project had a positive impact on students’ performance in the 2014-15 academic year.

Sources said that the department decided to wrap up the project after the Finance Department proposed that a committee be formed to frame guidelines to end the project. Soon after the Finance Department gave its recommendations, the department has had two meetings in this regard and is working on the logistics to sort out the accounts and payments.

Gopal Naik, professor, IIMB, who heads the project, said that he is not aware of the move.