Page 21 - XITE Magazine 2021

Annual Magazine

The Changing Dynamics of
The Changing Dynamics of Anil Tamsoy
The Changing Dynamics of
Education during COVID-19
Education during COVID-19 B.A Economics, Semester 1
Education during COVID-19

India went into lockdown in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in shutting down 99% of
India's enterprises. However, several new businesses evolved during this time, showcasing India's talent and
capability for innovation.
One such industry that has taken advantage of the pandemic is the online education, especially the coaching
industry. COVID-19 has caused the closure of schools and universities across the country. More than 37
million students were barred from physical classes, resulting in the distinctive rise of e-learning, while
teaching took place remotely and on digital platforms. With increasing demand for learning, many online
learning platforms offered free access to their services, in platforms such as BYJU, a Bangalore-based online
tutoring and educational technology company founded in 2011, which is now one of the most successful
educational technology company in the world. Investments in Indian educational technology market such as
Unacademy and Byju's increased over 300 percent in 2020.
Another such startup was ODA Class, launched in March 2020. The idea behind the startup was to provide the
most efficient online teaching. The objective was to facilitate a comprehensive evaluation of students in terms
of their accuracy in performing the task, test results, number of sessions attended, and others, which would
help to analyze and identify student weaknesses. Students can attend live classes with unlimited repetitions to
enhance their learning of the content. This ODA class helps students in classes VI-XII to wind up for
competitive exams such as JEE and NEET. By the end of 2020, 2 lakhs users were taking classes on ODA.
Being personalized and accessible, this model enhances the learning experience with the support of teachers
from top NITs and IITs. Typically, in India the online education model is where learnings impart from one
teacher to many students, one to many, or discussions or many-to-many models, where students discussed and
contributed to the discussion in the classroom, where each other's learnings prevailed. The startup
differentiates itself by following a dual master approach. It uses artificial intelligence technology for its
adaptive learning methods and customizes course content for students accordingly. The online learning
experience is enhanced with real-time interaction and virtual classroom feel. Vedantu also an online
educational technology uses this technology to bring teachers and students together on a single platform to
enable live learning with each other. Other edtech startups that have gained popularity in India during the
pandemic have included Toppr, GradeUp, TestBook, and many others attending to more than 360 million
learners.

The Primary education accounts for 66 percent of spending, followed by 27 percent for secondary education.
The Edtech segment in India is divided into several segments: Pre-K, K-12 and Exam Preparation, Higher
Education, Continuing Education and others. Following the record of 92 edtech startups, investors had funded
in 2020, as 61 were seed funded. The growth in investment in Edtech is also due to government attention to the
education sector, after it launched the National Education Policy this year. The growth in the Edtech segment
also coincided with the spread of the Internet in India, particularly in Level III and IV cities and towns.
However, one of the biggest problem faced by this industry in India is the one and only “digital divide”.
According to the annual educational status report, only a third of Indian school children, i.e. 32 percent have
access to online learning. Out of these, only 5% of students are doing live online classes. Just over 11% of all
students enrolled in private and government schools used online classes, another 21.5% used videos or
recorded classes. The only hope is that, this too is changing. It was found that, more than 60% of students live
in families with at least one smartphone. The proportion has increased largely in the last two years, from
36.5% to 61.8% among enrolled children. While Indian families have not acquired other assets such as TV
and vehicles between 2018 and 2020, smartphone ownership has gone up vastly. In states such as
Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura, an increase of more than 30 percent
in the proportion of children whose families own a smartphone was seen. Hopefully, this shall enhance the
accessibility of students to the Edtech industry and enhance their learning capability together with assisting
the much-needed reforms proposed by the New Education Policy, 2020.

Volume-VIII, 2020 19