Plenary Session IV: Using ICT to Promote Non-formal Education and Life Long Learning
Using ICT to Promote Non-formal Education and Life-long Learning
Anita Dighe, Director, Directorate of Distance Learning, India
We live in a world of inequalities. Although education is a basic human right, there are millions who have not been provided an opportunity for schooling and other means to become literate. Non-formal education programmes for out-of-school youth and adults have been increasingly promoted in most countries of the Asia-Pacific region for this purpose. The last decade has also seen an increasing penetration and rapid development of ICT that are fast becoming a central component of the teaching and learning environment. As a matter of fact, ICTs are now regarded as an important means for promoting lifelong learning in the developed countries. Their use in developing countries too is ensuring that education has become more accessible, more flexible, while providing a range of educational opportunities. There is, however, a strong possibility that while educational applications of technology would be made available to school-based programmes, due to scarce resources, the poorest and the marginalized groups will remain excluded in this kind of provisioning. The problem has been further exacerbated with the recent crisis in the global economy. The poor, developing countries have been hit the hardest by the onset of the financial crisis that they had no hand in causing. In the near future, these countries are likely to have lower levels of public spending on infrastructure, health and education. While it is still too early to predict whether the recession the world is experiencing can be turned around fully, the spectre of a large section of youth and adults not having access to ICTs and to non-formal education and thereby not participating in the knowledge society, is now looming large.