benchmarks and cost effectiveness, thereby supporting the education ecosystem to improve access to quality education at scale. Speaking on the need for such an initiative, Shaveta Sharma-Kukreja, CEO & MD, Central Square Foundation, said, "Among over 9,000 EdTech organisations in India, only about ONE per cent focus on foundational learning, and even fewer have built products for low-income segments. NIPUN is an ambitious programme and home learning will be critical to
help our children. The Accelerator adopts a unique approach catalysing supply of diverse high-quality solutions and galvanizing demand for at-home learning."The Accelerator is committed to nurture a vibrant ecosystem of mission-aligned EdTech organisations offering high quality solutions. Jagannatha Kumar, CEO, Reliance Foundation said, "India has seen a significant increase in EdTech solutions especially to address the
concerns of the past two years. The challenge remains to democratise the EdTech solutions across households. New solutions need to address scale, adoption and contextualization for equitable access and opportunity. Through co-founding the EdTech Accelerator, we are
committed to supporting the development of evidence-backed pedagogically sound and contextually relevant solutions to create a vibrant ecosystem to address this need."Dhun Davar, Head of Social Impact & Philanthropy India & Middle East, UBS and Head of Social Finance, UBS Optimus Foundation emphasizes that the time is right for such catalytic investments "Globally, and in India, there exists evidence to suggest that at-home learning and engaging parents in the learning process helps reinforce the skills learnt by children in school, thus improving learning outcomes of children. By enabling scale-up of contextually relevant EdTech solutions to support foundational learning at home, the Accelerator will help address the significant learning losses due to the pandemic,
especially for children from low-income communities in India owing to the sharp inequities in technology access."USAID/India Mission Director Veena Reddy said, "At USAID, we believe education is a foundational driver of development outcomes. With the world's largest youth population, supporting foundational learning in India is an investment in the world's future. Through partnering with the private sector and civil society to develop innovative learning
models, the EdTech Accelerator will enable improved educational outcomes and a more equitable and accessible learning environment.'Speaking on the overall approach of the Back-to-school outcomes fund, Richard Hawkes, Chief Executive, the British Asian Trust adds "Achieving universal foundational literacy and numeracy skills is critical for the wellbeing of millions of India's children and in the
longer-term, for India's economic growth. To mitigate the learning gap which increased with COVID-19, we need rapid innovation and collaborative action from civil society, private sector partners and philanthropic organisations working alongside the Government of India.
Innovative social financing is the mechanism enabling that, nudging boundaries and fostering innovation in new ways by changing the whole EdTech marketplace to in turn learning outcomes for those children most in need."
--IANS san/shb/
(Disclaimer: This post has been auto published from IANS news agency without any modification to the text and has not been reviewed by editor)
