The solution to India’s long-term learning needs

Education for every child in a country of 1.3 billion people—is this a distant dream or will it soon become a reality? Even after a decade of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, the challenge of bringing quality education to millions of children has not been solved. Picture this: K-12 learning solutions will account for 41% of the total edtech market size and 11.3 million could be the total number of paid users in the K-12 learning solutions space by 2025, according to a report. An edtech platform requires professionals such as course developers, course designers, technology experts, graphic designers, and subject matter experts to develop an online course. But the lack of qualified professionals and skilled manpower results in poor quality online courses and acts as a major hindrance to market growth. This brings us to the burning question: What is a sustainable solution for India’s long-term learning needs?

Owing to the paucity of quality teachers, most students being in small-town India, and affordability of education being a major roadblock, any practical solution to this problem must offer scale from the word go. How do you teach a student in a far-flung location, where there are no qualified teachers or efficient schools? Here we need to address two main problems: affordability and accessibility to quality learning, even in the remotest parts of the country. Live online classes can provide education to students no matter where they are located. Further, owing to strong tech intervention, one-to-many live models will make learning both affordable and accessible, as one quality teacher can teach up to 500 students during one live session.

Let us look at the global pandemic that brought all forms of physical learning and classroom experiences to a screeching halt. Initially stumped, it threw open a massive gateway for students to use live online learning so that India’s learning does not stop. A live online class is learning in a virtual setting where the student-teacher interaction is real-time, akin to a face-to-face learning experience. But it goes much beyond the traditional scope as students are continuously engaged through quizzes, leaderboards, hotspots, and instant doubt solving. These features are custom-designed for all students residing in any part of India.