Executive Summary
Public Education in India
Edtech in India
Data Governance in Education - Opportunities
Appendix
Toolkit
Executive Summary
In the last two decades, India has made a considerable effort to provide education for all but its learning outcomes are consistently low. It is hoped that new technologies like AI will help at various levels from making lessons more student-centric to analysing big data for better resource allocation. But the road ahead is long — or let’s say, exciting — for problem solvers. There is scope to develop more socially-considerate digital software, hardware, and infrastructure.
For our project, we have picked an equally vibrant opportunity: how might we strengthen education data ecosystems to meet the needs of our students and their communities better?
Edtech has seen a sharp uptick in the recent years with the public, private, and social sectors working towards context-specific challenges. It is an all-consuming effort that leaves no bandwidth for the question of data. There are very few interventions on this matter. Through this project we therefore want to start a conversation on consent, privacy – and agency – that can skew or straighten our dynamic with technology.
The need to reflect on data governance in education shines with a different urgency when held against our unfolding past. India had the world’s longest shutdown of schools due to the pandemic — leaving in its wake, dire consequences. An initial study by Azim Premji University found that 92% of children on an average had lost at least one language ability by 2021.[1] This is to say India’s students have regressed academically; they will scramble to make up for lost time as schools reopen. But in doing so, if they (re)turn to edtech, they should not be short-changed.
How might we encourage responsible data stewardship in education? How might we empower those affected by data-based decisions to advocate for themselves, using their data?
Our Research Process
We have focussed on India’s public schools for our foundational research because of their reach, heterogeneity, and complexity.
- Interviews with experts from various backgrounds to develop a deep understanding of edtech in India.
- Workshops at MozFest 2022 to gain a global perspective on what we learned from the above conversations.
- Secondary research to substantiate our insights from the interviews, and workshops.
The main findings from this research have been synthesised into design opportunities that will be taken forward by Mozilla Foundation’s Working Groups. This deck is meant to support their work by providing additional context and resources for education, technology, and data governance in India.
See the appendix for more details on our research process.