{"id":488,"date":"2009-10-14T08:53:59","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T12:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/?p=488"},"modified":"2012-09-27T10:37:34","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:37:34","slug":"at-12-per-student-how-can-ict4e-in-india-be-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/ict4e-sustainability\/at-12-per-student-how-can-ict4e-in-india-be-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"At $12 Per Student, How Can ICT4E in India Be Sustainable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

To illustrate the idea of sustainability in the context of using ICT for education I point to a recent news report related to the use of XO laptops in Manipur<\/a>, a small state of about 2.4 million people in India. The Manipur state government recently announced<\/a> that it will spend Rs 155 lakhs (around $300,000) in getting 1000 XO laptops for its school system. Those figures are from a news item dated Oct 6, 2009. <\/p>\n

\"olpc<\/a>
Is this really<\/i> affordable for Manipur state?<\/span><\/div>\n

Let\u2019s put those numbers in perspective first. The total budget for the Manipur state school education is Rs 6,000 lakhs (around $12 million). That is, state expenditure on school education is $5 per capita for the budget year 2009-10. <\/p>\n

Assuming that about 40 percent of the state population falls in the school-going age group, per student state spending on education is around $12 this year. These numbers are fairly representative for the various Indian states. Compare that to what the state is paying for each XO laptop: $300.<\/p>\n

The news report says that \u201cinitiative is basically for effective education, teaching and self-learning by students.\u201d Accepting for the moment that the initiative does indeed achieve its stated goals, it has to be admitted that at best it amounts to a small experiment \u2013 1,000 students equipped with a laptop from an estimated student population of 1 million students. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s about 0.1percent of the whole student body. Even if the entire education budget were to be allocated to buying laptops \u2013 which is clearly impossible \u2013 only about 40,000 students (or 4 percent of the total) would get enhanced education. The rest of 96 percent will get no support at all. <\/p>\n

Using laptops \u2013 even the low-priced $300 XO laptop \u2013 is clearly a non-starter for the Manipal state education system. The money for actually implementing the program on any appreciable scale simply does not exist. At best this initiative is an experiment which could indicate that it is possible for increased funding to improve educational outcomes \u2013 but that has never really been in doubt.<\/p>\n

The Manipal story is instructive. I am not arguing that ICT for education is a meaningless concept in struggling economies. I believe that technology has a critical role to play in making education cheaper, effective and accessible for the poor. I also believe that the cost-benefit calculations will work out in favour of using technology. That test is the first test of sustainability \u2013 that over the relevant period, the benefits exceed the costs.<\/p>\n

What they are attempting in Manipal would at best raise the peak performance of the education system but will do nothing to raise \u2013 and indeed it may even lower \u2013 the average level of the system. This is not sustainable in any sense of the word.<\/p>\n

Another point to note from the Manipal case is that if the education budget could somehow be expanded from $12 million to say about $300 million, perhaps they could afford universal use of laptops. But $12 billion is the total annual allocation for India\u2019s education \u2013 a population of 1.2 billion people, with about 500 million in the school-going age. <\/p>\n

So the question is how to determine the sustainable and appropriate use of ICT in education. I think that the answer may lie in looking around in domains other than education. <\/p>\n

If someone were to ask, \u201cwhat is \u2018sustainability\u2019 in ICT for \u2018X\u2019 ?\u201d where X can be anything from banking, retailing, manufacturing, agriculture, aviation, etc? Should ICT be used in X, and if so, to what extent is answered by those who are in the X business. Businesses that make the right choices subject to hard budget constraints survive. There is no controversy about which ICT tools to use and how much of the budget to allocate to them because the system eliminates wasters.<\/p>\n

In a similar sense, if educational systems were held to a \u201csurvival in the marketplace\u201d criterion, the system will soon enough figure out what ICT tools to use given the hard budget constraints. Sustainability of ICT use would be a natural consequence of the sustainability of the education system. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To illustrate the idea of sustainability in the context of using ICT for education I point to a recent news report related to the use of XO laptops in Manipur<\/a>, a small state of about 2.4 million people in India. The Manipur state government recently announced<\/a> that it will spend Rs 155 lakhs (around $300,000) in getting 1000 XO laptops for its school system. Those figures are from a news item dated Oct 6, 2009. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put those numbers in perspective first. The total budget for the Manipur state school education is Rs 6,000 lakhs (around $12 million). That is, state expenditure on school education is $5 per capita for the budget year 2009-10. Assuming that about 40 percent of the state population falls in the school-going age group, per student state spending on education is around $12 this year. These numbers are fairly representative for the various Indian states. Compare that to what the state is paying for each XO laptop: $300.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[204],"tags":[40,225,17,222,223,41,224,226,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2622,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/2622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}