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Of Edtech; It’s A Lot
Like The Past!
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15 Feb'20  14 min
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• With so much focus on technology

in the classroom, schools are under
pressure to invest more in gadgetry
• While teaching is turning to digital
tools, students are still tested
through analogue exams and
standardised grading
• Does an increased focus on tech
and digital learning necessarily
equal improved learning
outcomes?

 “I am forty and employed in

a job which does not have
much
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him a rocket scientist or a

doctor or anything which
will give him immunity to
automation in 10-15 years.” 

Beas Dev Ralhan is used to hearing parents parrot this line.

Ralhan, cofounder and CEO of Next Education, has heard
parents’ worries and laments about their kids’ futures on a
near-daily basis for years. As the once distant threat of
automation becomes a clear and present danger, perhaps jobs
for rocket scientists and doctors are at least somewhat
resistant to being taken over by robots — the keyword being
somewhat. 

For Ralhan and other educators like him, the frantic parents
are a sign of the ght to stay relevant in the 21st-century job
market. Technology is seen as the saviour, but how much of it
is actually useful in the Indian context? 

The task of predicting the future is herculean for educators as

each year a new set of parents has di erent expectations and
demands. It also doesn’t help that exposure to newer methods
of teaching and learning outcome measurement has forced
parents to look for schools and tutoring that emphasise
technology. While some parents demand that private schools
let students explore their interests instead of simply focussing
on rote-learning, others are urging schools to just focus on the
most basic outcome — test results. 
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 Ralhan, whose company Next Education is a K-12 edtech
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solutions provider, said this makes the business of primary
school education a tough nut to crack. 

Businesses are run on hard numbers and the assumption of

rational customers, while the initial years of schooling are
anything but that. Caught between parents’ expectations,
standardised tests, an uncertain future of jobs and a
reluctance to change a 100-year-old approach to pedagogy,
the future of classrooms in India’s top private schools is as
confused as some of the kids sitting in them.

Depending on who you ask, the vision for the future of

education varies wildly. Tech companies betting big on what
will be a $100 Bn opportunity (in India alone) this year, are
perhaps the most vocal of the lot. The fact is that India has the
largest number of schools and school-going kids and no clear
idea of how to match international standards of mathematical
ability, scienti c reasoning, comprehension and language
skills. 

All this makes India a prime breeding grounds for techies and
marketers with very little skin in the game to sell their version
of the future of the classroom.

From hardware makers with interactive whiteboards at ten-

times the cost of a humble blackboard (RIP) to pushy
purveyors of tablets crammed with video content (looking at
you BYJU’s) and savvy marketers waxing about the latest
outcome-oriented solutions with AI and machine learning
algorithms, edtech startups come in all shapes, sizes and
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 Edtech startups promise free and open access to knowledge,
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transparency and constant feedback, gami cation and
outcomes. They claim everything short of downloading the
lessons into a child’s brain — many claim palliative qualities
that are simply vaporware. So how are parents and teachers
supposed to nd common ground in this?  

Is there a place for real learning in the edtech startup’s vision

of gadgetry-driven consumption, video watching and
interactive games? Does it actually deliver better results
among students than good ol’ cramming? And at what cost? 

The Old King Is Dead;

Long Live The King

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 NEWS FEATURES STARTUP STORIES INC42+ INFOCUS STARTUP REPORTS

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The problem with the edtech vision for the future of education
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on a retelling of its past. Flipping through 
 pages of history, these so-called educational breakthroughs
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and ideas being peddled today are not new. 

Consider this: Thomas Edison predicted in 1913 that “books

will soon be obsolete in schools”. 

Edison’s reputation as a businessman far outshine his prowess

as an inventor, so it might have made business sense to the
entrepreneurs of the time but unfortunately, this vision did not
come true for the next few decades. Edison, incidentally, had
invested in motion picture technology at the time, which was
the precursor to video and then digital media. So in a way, the
BYJU’s model was rst oated over 100 years ago. 

The last hundred years of pedagogy’s rich history is littered

with such claims of tech breakthroughs and visions — slide
projectors were all the rage in the 1950s, online education
took root at the University of Illinois in 1960 (though the
internet was still nine years away), and by the 1980s, most
university libraries were digitised. In 1994, the rst online high
school Compu High was founded. But the revolution is far
from apparent. 

Related Article: Union Budget 2018: Here’s A Look At What

EdTech Startups Want From Jaitley This Year

Educational lms were going to change everything. Teaching

machines were going to change everything. The internet was
going to change everything. The refrains of today’s edtech
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 But this has not deterred the other two big stakeholders of
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this industry — educators and parents — from trying to
integrate tech into the classroom.

 “Things have changed but

not by much. Tech is
available for everyone and
it is easy to build smart
classrooms but the minute
these panels or projectors
are switched on kids take it
as TV show,” said Vijaya
Lakshmi, a teacher with 30
years of experience in
Delhi’s private schools.

Picture the vision of the future painted by today’s edtech

companies — kindergarteners are putting on virtual reality
headsets and using augmented reality to learn the alphabet
and numbers. Homework consists of watching a few videos as
a camera tracks your eyes for engagement and distraction.
Textbooks are relics of the past, unknown to most young
learners as everything is digital — including notebooks. Real
labs are replaced by AR-powered virtual labs where students
can mix chemicals or see the human anatomy in breath-taking
3D detail. And yes, some schools have even replaced the
morning
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 When broken down in this manner, the classroom of the future
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seems more dystopian than utopic. 

And many wonder whether any of this technology is actually

doing any good. Nevertheless, those who run schools have
the unenviable job of trying to please parents who seemed to
have bought into the edtech pitch gleefully. Despite the
di erent opinions on technology in the classroom among
parents, many schools seem to think introducing technology
will automatically future-proof them. It also does not help that
a big onus of the child’s performance is on schools, so the
pressure from parents who want technology wins the day. 

But as educators we spoke to told us — good results are more

a function of the quality of education, not the amount of
investment that’s gone into the infrastructure nor the
technology that delivers the lesson. So schools are facing a
larger question of how to blend technology into the classroom
experience in a meaningful manner.

“In the future, a platform that provides content, or does a

modicum of personalisation will not be enough. A deep
understanding of how best to teach and innovation in the way
one learns will lead to better learning outcomes of the future,
as tech and connectivity are becoming cheaper,” said Manan
Khurma, CEO and founder, CueMath, which works with
school students on mathematics training online as well as
through in-person coaching. 

So what is stopping schools from giving up the forced

implementation of tech in many cases and adhering to the
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4 best version of school education? Two words.
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 NEWS
Parental Pressure
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In India, educators and operators of elite schools (typically the

ones with the money and the will to adopt newer methods)
are caught between two sets of parents. While the rst
comment is typical of parents that want schools to buckle
down on their kids early on so that they can get “good jobs”,
there is a second set of expectations from parents that want
education to focus on more than just curriculum — they want
holistic learning and development. Other parents look at
schools for foreign colleges and get a more “rounded
education”.

 “Schools today will have to

decide which category of
parents they are catering
to,” Ralhan of Next
Education said. 

There’s a well-established hierarchy of public schools,

grammar schools and private schools in other countries,
Ralhan pointed out. “In the UK, all the middle-class kids go to
public schools. Out of those, the brilliant ones go to grammar
schools which are almost as good as private schools and the
rich kids all go to private schools.” 

Despite this, 70% of the jobs which pay more than $100K per
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4 year go to people who have studied in private schools, he
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added.
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This means that India’s elite schools, most of which focus on

homogenising the standards and quality of education across a
large spread of the population, will soon have to create
specialised facilities depending on what the parents want.
Problem is parents themselves are uncertain about what sort
of skills their kids will require 10 to 15 years from now.

Past Continuous, Future

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“If you see the number of
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Indian schools which are

truly embracing technology,
the number would be
around just 2000 schools
across the country. 3000, if
we are being generous,”
Amol Arora, the managing
director of Shemford and
Shemrock group of schools
told Inc42. 

That’s the tiniest of fractions from the 1.5 Mn schools in India

currently. So when one talks about technology in primary
education, one is barely scratching the surface. 

That technocentric future is still a few years o if not a whole

decade away, Arora indicated. Edtech, of course, is not
immune to the same challenges that other tech-centric
sectors and models face. That of shrinking digitisation as they
attempt to widen the base. And with edtech the situation is
worse o in Tier 4/5 cities and semi-urban areas as school
infrastructure is largely crumbling there. 

 As Pranjal Kumar, CFO and

4
head
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STARTUP failure rate
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edtech startups is
comparable with any other
sector. Given that education
is a high-involvement
category and a career-
affecting service, tech
adoption is usually lower
compared to other services
and products. Hence,
edtech startups can take
more time to scale up than
in some of the other
categories.”

In the urban context, the inability to participate in outcome

measurement — board certi cate exams — is a big
impediment for edtech penetration. While primary education
is de nitely better-o with the use of interactive lessons and
personalised learning tools, the outcomes are shoe-horned
into standardised tests across most systems of schooling. 

According to BYJU’s COO Mrinal Mohit 2020 will be the year

when learning goes ‘phygital’, which is just another way of
saying, there will be more tech in classrooms. “Seamless
o ine-online integration will add a whole new dimension to
digital learning and key to delivering impactful learning
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4 programmes. The environment will be conducive to a
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homogenous format of learning, which will translate into

 learners learning while they are doing,” he told us in an earlier
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interaction. 

Edtech Can’t Get Rid Of

Exams
In fact, all the schools and teachers that Inc42 spoke to said
that very little had changed in terms of board exams being the
focal point for parents and competitive entrance exams being
the next step in the journey for a student after school. It’s the
kind of sad ground reality that technology cannot change, no
matter how engaging the content or how cleverly it’s
packaged. 

As Lakshmi told us, CBSE now emphasises on experiential

learning but it is mostly ine ective as the question papers
have not changed much in the past two decades.

Tech is also unable to step into the develop the interpersonal

skills that a classroom builds in a student. It’s impossible for
technology to imitate the friendships that blossom in school
or to evoke the same admiration that a curious ward has for
their teacher. These are the very real bene ts of a school
education, which are rarely spoken of, but which are perhaps
the most important from the point of view of psychosocial
development of a young mind. 

This separation of holistic education from a useful one leaves

it up to the parents to make the tough choice — the cold,
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4 hard approach with a focus on grades OR a exible and open
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 interpersonal skill development and holistic learning. And
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sadly, the choice has nothing to do with the child’s interests
but more to do with their parents’ social status. 

Sabarinath Nair, founder of Skillveri, an edtech startup that

uses augmented reality and virtual reality for skilling, told
Inc42, “These technologies have to be seen as a means to an
end, instead of an end in itself. A framework is to be used to
decide if a particular content or concept will be better
delivered through AR/VR, instead of mindlessly applying the
technology for everything.”

The Edtech Class Divide

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employment is harder to nd, the only hope for parents is that

 their kids jump to a higher social rung through a solid
 NEWS FEATURES STARTUP STORIES INC42+ INFOCUS STARTUP REPORTS
foundation in education. Considering that education has long-
term e ects which run from one generation to the next, Indian
schools say that this change in business models from old-
school learning to tech-driven lessons will de nitely lead to
deeper social polarisation and at a much younger age.

A 2008 report on the rise of private schooling had noted that

“one important consideration in choosing a school is to form
associations and networks that can help later in life” while
describing what prompts students in US campuses to join
fraternities and sororities.” 

The report, which was written by Sonalde Desai, Amaresh

Dubey, Reeve Vanneman and Rukmini Banerji, and reviewed
by Nobel laureate Abhijit Bannerjee and edited by former Niti
Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya, added:

 “What the children or their

parents will be paying for is
partly the quality of
education, but more
importantly for the quality of
associates the students are
likely to find in this (private)
school.” 

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 In fact, this somewhat thoughtless chasing of status markers
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has pushed schools to invest mindlessly in interactivity and
technology, without a thought being paid to whether it’s
actually having an impact. And schools are businesses too,
that would de nitely want to invest to earn bigger returns in
the form of higher fees that such parents are more often than
not willing to pay. 

The move towards such a class division has already started,

and while it would be imprudent to blame it on the reliance of
tech, one cannot deny that technology is a big part of the
sales pitch. The last decade has seen the rise of ‘International
Schools’ in India, which routinely charge anywhere between
INR 2 Lakh and INR 7 Lakh in tuition fees annually as
compared to top-end public schools which generally charge
half that, and public schools, which charge a fraction of that
princely sum. With about 700 international schools, India has
now outstripped China in terms of numbers of these premium
institutions.

Big tech loves to yell disruption. In many ways, technology in

education has democratised content and accessibility, but in
other ways, it’s put children through a confusing maze as they
try to understand what learning really is. Is it just watching a
video, or is it about human interactions and teachable
moments that one goes through in the classroom? 

With inputs from Nikhil Subramaniam

Edtech

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Author
Aditya Kondalamahanty
Inc42 Sta

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