Access To Education In the Times of Corona

By Ankush Singla, Co-founder, Coding Ninjas

While the world is undergoing a paradigm shift across verticals, the global Ed-tech space has managed to sail the ship amidst the times of global crisis. This has led to schools across several states shutting down while the higher education institutes are in a wait-and-watch mode. Many of the premier institutes, including the IIMs and IITs, have suspended classes and taking them online could be the next step. Various players in the market have come forward to help the student community during this lockdown by offering free courses, reducing the course fee or organising a series of informative webinars and online coding events. These efforts are undertaken to sustain the supply of quality education while the students are in the confines of their homes.

Online learning, thus, may be thrust into the spotlight, even if under unfortunate circumstances. Even without the alarm bells ringing, ed-tech is an idea whose time has come. India’s educational landscape is ripe for the massive disruption it can potentially cause, an ed-tech revolution is brewing in India, therefore. The engines driving this change are home-grown players using Artificial Intelligence and gamification to skill India’s youth.

Coding Ninjas in the wake of the lockdown has been aggressive in its approach to offer quality education via Online Coding Events and Webinars to help the students utilise their time effectively. Besides, we are providing free programming courses to the college faculty members from all across India that has witnessed a significant number of course registrations from the faculties of Lovely Professional University (LPU), Chitkara University, Benette University, Bhartiya Vidyapeeth-Pune, Chandigarh Group Of Colleges (CGC), Thapar University, Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University (IGDTU) and many other government colleges. The most preferred courses among the faculties have been Data Science, Machine Learning, Foundation programming courses, and Web Development.

The step will not only provide inclusivity by facilitating learning across geographies in India but, will also mark a shift in the focus from content to the capacity of tech-platforms—being enablers. At a time when content is being marketed at a premium, we believe that ed-tech platforms as enablers will accelerate growth going forward.

A report states that a total of 29 countries have shut schools nationwide, impacting almost 391.5 million children and youth. A further 20 countries have implemented localised school closures to prevent or contain the spread of COVID-19. UNESCO states that if these countries also order nationwide school and university closures, it would disrupt the education of more than 500 million additional children and youth.

To reduce the burden of the ongoing crisis, Coding Ninjas has also donated some amount to the daily wage earners via www.feedingindia.org to help our nation and its people in the best way we can.

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