Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had announced the government’s plan to introduce a policy for the regulation of the edtech sector in the country. While the larger framework may take time, the government has now decided to closely track the implementation of a code of conduct adopted by a newly constituted edtech consortium.
The latest development comes after a high level between the Education Ministry officials and the new India edtech consortium which was represented by five edtech firms and IAMAI, reported a leading news daily. A source close to the development said that the consortium had shown willingness for self-regulation and has officially shared its code of ethics with the ministry.
Also read| IAMAI Launches India EdTech Consortium, BYJU’s, upGrad, Unacademy, Vedantu Join
The points of the code of conduct that seeks to address irregularities in areas of marketing, communication, and financing practices of the companies were discussed during the Tuesday meeting. EdTech firms have been at the receiving end of criticism for their alleged misleading ads and false claims.
In December 2021, the Education Ministry had issued an advisory asking students and parents to be cautious of the unfair practices used by many edtech firms. The ministry asked the student community to not trust the advertisements of edtech companies ‘blindly’ and warned them against signing up for any load or installing any mobile edtech application without verifying the authenticity.
Read| Union Budget 2022 Should Look Beyond Mainstream Education, Bridge Digital Divide: Experts
The advisory further mentioned that the free services offered by some of these companies must be carefully evaluated before usage. India’s edtech sectors have been on a rise for the last few years. The demand for online classes and teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic has put several startups like Byju’s, Unacademy, UpGrad, Simplilearn, Vedantu, and others in a fast growth trajectory. Many more startups are already in the pipeline. While there is no official data from the government, startup data intelligence firm Tracxn claims that there were 9,043 edtech startups in India as of December 2021.
Read all the Latest Education News here
Comments
0 comment