Ending digital divide among school goers

What if each student is given a computer? This would be much better than some of the schemes our political parties come up with

- Janmejaya Sinha

The current school system in India is failing us with learning outcomes as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) illustrates each year. This is truly tragic. One of the biggest gifts India can give to the aging world in the coming decades is youth. But it is a gift only if the young it offers are educated. The statistics are telling: Average ages across the world are 19 in Africa, 29 in India, 40 in China and the US and over 44 in the European Union, South Korea and Japan – with Japan nearly 50, Italy nearly 48 and Germany nearly 46 being the highest. Therefore, the fact that young Indians suffer from poor learning outcomes is a matter of utmost concern not just for India but for the world. In fact, today, the total global population is 8 billion people. It will stabilize finally in 2072 at 10 billion. The additional 2 billion will come from South Asia and Africa.

It is not that improving the quality of schools in India is not a top agenda for the Indian central and state governments. The discussion around school education has not changed – teacher training, teacher attendance, teacher salaries, more schools, and better facilities. We have over 1.4 million schools, but the ASER illustrates that in the 14–18 age group, more than half the children struggle with a division of a three-digit number by one digit. Clearly, outcomes are moving up very slowly.