Designing a system for reducing absenteeism and improving the basic knowledge of teachers in government schools

Abstract

INTEL-NSRCEL conducted a program called Youth Enterprise at IIM Bangalore in February2012. The authors of this paper are one of the 6 teams selected for a 6 month project on egovernance to be mentored by NSRCEL and technical support provided by INTEL. Thetheme of the program is to bring out the bright ideas from students community and helpgovernment implement projects in e-governance space based on the success and impactthese projects create during the pilot phase. This is a flavor of Social Entrepreneurship witha good amount of government support.The authors chose the theme “Education” among the options available like Rural Jobsector, agriculture, and healthcare. The following are the reasons for this decision:1) Easy to scale since government is deploying other ICT infrastructure at schools.2) Knowledge of the sector and the difficulties schools face ( One of the authors motheris a teacher).3) Education is the Critical Soft Infrastructure that can shape the society, so anypositive change will have a major impact.The study started with an analysis of the infrastructure in the state of Karnataka. Lower Primary - 25979, Higher Primary - 33619, High Schools - 13866. The above numbers show how big an impact can be if a low-cost & effective system isdeveloped. Central government is giving funds to the state governments for setting up ICTinfrastructure (both hardware & software) in all the High Schools in the first phase. Theaim of these ICT initiatives is to strengthen the overall education system and to improvethe quality of education delivered. The team visited a school in Jaya-Nagar, Bangalore toget a firsthand feel of the computers and the way they are being used. Please refer toExhibit 1 for the pictures. The computers are used for some routine work like printingscore cards and teacher schedules. But, is this all such an expensive and functional infrastructure can achieve? Are current computing capabilities used at least to 10% of theiractual potential? Is the lack of a proper model to exploit the benefits the computing powera problem? Or, is the lack of proper human capital to run the systems causing the problem?Do we have a better alternative to use such infrastructure that government is pouringmoney into? This paper examines all these questions and develops a model that canimprove the effectiveness of education in government schools.