Dr Jeremy Williams is the academic director of Asian International College (India)

India — like many other countries  — is in the midst of a paradigm shift in education driven by the very economic and technological forces that have transformed Indian industry. Learning via the Internet  — formerly known as ‘e-learning’ —  started to become popular in the early 2000s, but has remained largely outside the mainstream. Now people have begun to question why digital technologies that have become such an integral part of our personal and work lives are still on the periphery of education.

High-quality education can now be delivered online at price points that offer great value for money to learners. Technology is fundamental in this regard, but the greatest hazards for traditional institutions lie in areas of curriculums and pedagogies which in most cases are seriously outdated.

In particular, the opportunity to rapidly upgrade teacher training in the early childhood education (ECE) sector should not be missed as numerous longitudinal studies have demonstrated that quality ECE programmes can have a dramatic impact on a child’s life chances and, by extension, the well-being of entire societies. In short, the prospect of realising the much-publicised ‘demographic dividend’ will be significantly heightened if we harness the power of the Internet to access contemporary curriculums and the latest digital pedagogies to produce better ECE educators.

It’s indisputable that there’s a chronic shortage of well-trained teachers. The problem is particularly acute in the ECE sector, where it’s common for people with no formal training to be employed as teachers. Even when teachers have ECE qualifications, premium privately operated preschools find it necessary to put them through their own training programmes because fresh ECE teacher graduates are simply not job-ready.

Based on data collected for its annual rankings of preschools, EducationWorld estimates there are 300,000 standalone private preschools in India with an aggregate enrolment of 15 million children, employing around 1.5 million teachers. In this neglected but vital segment of the education sector, a conversation is taking place about how to address the teacher education problem and the related issues of talent retention.

Sadly, this conversation does not extend to the government-run anganwadis, which — according to the official government of India statistics — approximately number 1.6 million and employ an estimated 2 million workers. The primary focus of anganwadis is basic nutrition and healthcare, with only rudimentary early childhood education, if it is offered at all. Herein lies the greatest irony surrounding the current discourse on India’s demographic dividend, because if there were a single initiative that will yield the greatest return on investment, it would be early childhood education within poorer sections of the community.

The evidence in support of this assertion is both voluminous and compelling and includes a Nobel Laureate in economics, James Heckman, among its firmest advocates. Academic literature on brain development produced in the last decade or so tells us that the years 0-5 are the most critical, and interventions during this period can have a profound impact on a child’s life chances. However, if untrained (or poorly trained) teachers make these interventions, the impact could be far less or perhaps negative.

A 21st-century paradigm for teacher education offers great opportunities to boost early childhood education in India. Digitised curriculum predominantly delivered online can address the quality factor and reduce the need to roll out bricks-n-mortar teacher education programmes on a large scale. Technology can be used to enhance pedagogy to make it more learner-centric. There can be an assessment for learning  — rather than of learning  —  which is outcomes-driven and grounded in reality. In other words, new technologies can disseminate learning that lasts beyond the test.

Flexibility in the delivery of learning programmes is also a key element of the new paradigm. The virtual world is now the real world. We spend an enormous amount of time each day using desktops, laptops, tablets or hand-held devices. We do business online, we socialise online, and we find life partners online. Access to information and communication technologies is no longer the realm of the geek; it is part and parcel of life.

Of all countries, this applies to India more than most. Indians are among the most smartphone-addicted people in the world, and this country boasts the second-highest ownership of smartphones worldwide after the US. One could view this data negatively. But   on the other hand, this proclivity could be a major catalyst for change.

Could access to increasingly affordable hand-held devices connected to the Internet usher in a new teaching-learning paradigm? Could this be the ultimate Make in India initiative, leveraging the demographic dividend to provide quality education on a mass scale, to the point where anganwadi workers can become digitally literate teachers?

This can become a reality, and when it does, investment in early childhood education in India will pay off in a big way.

Also read: Belated Teacher Training Revolution in K-12 Education