Satellite to cure education ills?
RUSHI BAKSHI
|
EDUSAT to accelerate improvement by providing nation wide connectivity
|
In spite of India having 817 thousand primary and upper schools, 42 million children (6-14 years) do not attend school. Only 47 per cent children enrolled in class I reach class VIII, 19 per cent primary schools are single teacher schools. Nearly 300 million people (>7 years) are illiterate, 100,000 inhabited villages do not have facilities for primary schooling.
India intends providing education to all. What would it take to implement this? If the 42 million out-of-school children were to be put into schools, it would require one million additional class rooms and as many new teachers; universities would require thousands of additional senior faculty to churn out one million qualified teachers. Add to this the huge backlog of infrastructure and teachers. And we have yet to even start discussing the quality. Poor connectivity and non-electrification of many villages, and India’s multi-lingual/multi-cultural population complicates matters further.
Reasons for drop-outs
Why does India have so many out-of-school children or drop-outs? There are many reasons — supporting the family through employment (farming, beedi rolling, carpet weaving, etc.), rag-picking, shoe-shining, working as domestic help, simply begging or looking after younger siblings. Being children of migrant families is one more reason for discontinuity in education. Restrictions due to social or religious practices — especially for adolescent girls and lack of sanitation facilities are additional reasons. Non-availability of teachers and teaching materials, uninteresting curriculum, frequent failure to get promoted to the next class, and (perceived) irrelevance to livelihood options adds to the woes. Inconvenient timings and duration in terms of family/economic demands further increases the opportunity cost of education.
The education fraternity has been struggling to provide solutions. Compromises are made in the stipulated qualification for teachers by providing “para-teachers,” estimated at over half-a-million, to fill in the capacity gap. Non-formal and alternative schooling programs are also being provided. But the problems still remain.
Satellite based systems provide answers to many of the above problems by attempting to provide education to villages which are not well-connected or without a school or teacher, or where the school timings are not convenient, or the family migrates for employment. Satellite based systems offer easy and flexible connectivity, audio-visual pedagogy to improve quality and make learning interesting, instructions in multiple languages and social contexts, easy monitoring, etc.
The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was launched in India in 1975 by ISRO and NASA using the satellite ATS-6. The project, supported by UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF and International Telecommunications Union (ITU), telecast educational programs pertaining to health, hygiene and family planning directly to clusters of around 400 villages each in six Indian states.
The experiment ran for one year from August1975 to July 1976. As per the evaluation of SITE made by ISRO, the impact of SITE was substantial and significant. The evaluation study of SITE by Planning Commission concluded that while the general interest and viewership was highest in the first few months (200 to 600 people per TV set), it dropped sharply thereafter to 60-80 people per TV set. This was due to, typically faulty television/hardware, erratic electricity supply, poor software, villagers’ pre-occupation with domestic or agricultural work, since this was community viewing.
EDUSAT
On the 21st September 2004, ISRO launched a 1950 kg satellite, EDUSAT, dedicated to education, using India’s Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F01). This is a collaborative effort of Central Ministry of HRD and ISRO, implemented by IGNOU (nodal institution), AICTE, ICAR, NCERT and the UGC. Edusat covers the entire country providing connectivity to schools, colleges, institutions of higher learning and supports non-formal education. Edusat is expected to provide engineering education also in collaboration with IIT-Mumbai. It would disseminate information on health, hygiene, skill enhancement, etc. But three decades later, some of the problems and systemic weaknesses still persist.
There is considerable scope to improve the quality and quantity of teaching material and strengthening the involvement of self- governments and civil society at the village level to operate and maintain the hardware. Satellite based programming needs to be integrated into national and regional educational programs.
Our scientists and technologists need to work towards cheaper, ruggedised and more reliable hardware solutions, maintenance-free power supply solutions and improved battery design, and more efficient multi-lingual simultaneous transmission software.
Having tossed up Edusat, if we cannot accelerate our education indicators, we shall have only ourselves to blame.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Open Page
