Computer-aided teaching big draw for education cos

Situated in rustic Raichur, Karnataka, some 409 km from the IT hub of Bangalore, is a 2,000 sq ft government-run educational institution with tin roofs and brick walls.

A 300 sq ft room at the rear end in this Kannada medium school houses about 10 computers.

The 450 students from this school are taken to the computer lab turn by turn, and taught subjects from science to math to history in their own language through the computer, making learning interesting and creating an inclination for technology in the young minds.

Like this Raichur school, there are thousands of other government-aided schools in districts like Etah and Hamipur (Uttar Pradesh), Kadapa and Chittor (Andhra Pradesh), Valsad (Gujarat), Kalahandhi and Korput (Orissa), Dumka (Jharkhand), Mewat (Haryana), etc which are increasingly getting connected with computers.

With computer penetration in schools being a dismal 11% as per statistics by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), education companies in the country are lining up to capitalise on the situation and provide government-school children with access to computers through a public-private partnership with state governments.

Says Soumya Kanti, president of the information and communication technology (ICT) division at Delhi-based Educomp Solutions, “There are over 11.2 lakh government schools in the country. ICT will clearly continue to be a major tool for the improvement of education of the country.”

Working through the build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) model, when an education company gets a contract for a particular school through the tender process, it provides the technology-intensive infrastructure, trains the teachers and also develops content.

“Approximately Rs 3.5 lakh go into setting up the infrastructure alone,” says S Venugopalan, general manager, ICT, at Chennai-based firm Everonn Systems.
The government reimburses the invested amount on a quarterly basis over a period of five years, and on completion of the five-year period, the school is transferred back to the state government.

According to analyst Harit Shah from Angel Broking, the PPP model can fetch companies good margins, in the range of 25-30% annually.

Everonn caters to over 6 lakh students across 11 states in some 4,442 schools.
Kanti says Educomp caters to about 75 lakh students across 13,792 schools, adding,“By the end of this financial year, we want to reach 17,000-18,000 schools.”