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• IT Policy in India
• Department of Education

Following intensive cross-country discussion, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) released the National Curriculum Framework for School Education in India in November 2000, providing guiding principles for reshaping the curriculum for schools.

While recognising that the process of education can no longer ignore the social and psychological impacts of ICTs, the framework also acknowledges the potential that global information sharing enables, identifying the need to provide access to global information sources as a priority goal.

Designing a course of study to integrate information technology into schooling is by no mean easy, as technology changes faster than ideas can be implemented. Still, there remain certain basic principles that define the prospect of this emerging area in school education, implications of which have been elaborated in the Curriculum Framework.

Identified goals include the formulation of plans for the integration of computers into the curriculum, the creation of a framework for enhancing learning opportunities using ICTs across the curriculum, designing a flexible curricular model which would embrace inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary thinking and the development of attitudes that are value driven, rather than technology-driven.

Furthermore, it is deemed vital to the success of the implementation of ICTs to provide professional development opportunities for teachers, enabling them to act as facilitators of learning, helping the students to become their own teachers and to think for themselves.

Each state's interpretation of how these goals are best acheived, are as diverse as they are ambitious. While the establishment of new learning centres remains a constant nationwide, levels of investment, the minimum age of mandatory computer education, connectivity and subjects specified for computer integration vary greatly, as can be seen in Initiatives and Status on Human Resource Development in Information Technology in Union States and Territories.