As a developing nation, India struggles to extend universal education to underserved areas and to keep the children who are presently in school from dropping out. Literacy has traditionally lagged in rural areas, where a shortage of teachers, resources, and funds keep students from attending and staying in school. The lack of an educated workforce has retarded economic growth in those areas.

India has undertaken an extensive literacy campaign, with the goal of raising the sustainable threshold literacy rate to 75 percent in the first decade of the 21st century. In 2001, the year of the most recent census, less than 40 percent of the 330 million Indian women who were then seven years of age or older were literate.

Toward Universal Access to Education

The Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI) seeks to improve social and economic conditions in Rajasthan, India’s largest state, by providing access to schools for all children, to fill teacher vacancies, and to increase expenditures for education. Launched in 2005, the initiative is part of the Global Education Initiative, an effort to reduce the gap between developed and developing countries in partnership with the World Economic Forum and business leaders. According to the Indian government, REI has generated impressive results in enhancing the reach and quality of education by focusing on improving the delivery and management of education services in Rajasthan.

REI’s chief goal is to provide universal access to primary education by 2010 and to secondary education by 2020. REI also aims at boosting school retention levels, increasing access for girls, enhancing the quality of learning in core subjects such as mathematics, science, and English, and expanding the curriculum to provide students with the IT skills they need to participate in the global knowledge-based economy. To help promote inclusiveness, REI uses strategies such as alternative schools, evening schools, bridge courses, and mobile schools.

How Cisco Is Making a Difference

Cisco has helped establish five District Computer Education Centres to date, each equipped with 30 to 40 desktop computers. A total of 312 students have graduated from the Networking Academy IT Essentials course, 118 of them girls. Currently 135 students (28 girls) are enrolled in courses at the centers.

July 2008 saw the rollout of Lifelines in the Udaipur district of Rajasthan. Lifelines is a telephone-based information service initially introduced to rural farmers in partnership with British Telecom and the NGO One World that now supports teachers with advice on curriculum, pedagogy, policy, and administration. The teachers call into a voicemail system with their questions and receive a recorded response when they call back later. The service currently reaches some 11,000 teachers at 4651 schools.