Here’s how Apeejay Education and Amazon Web Services are redefining India’s education sector 

The changing face of India’s educational sector since the outbreak of Covid-19 has exposed several challenges. Some of them being institutions’ lack of digital preparedness, dearth of accessible learning content, widening digital divide, need to integrate hybrid learning, and absence of teacher readiness for online teaching. These gaps need to be addressed immediately to improve the quality of teaching-learning in the country. 

To strengthen the educational sector’s growth and development, the Government of India launched the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 demonstrating the need to integrate technology in education while improving teaching-learning at all levels.

Supporting this vision, Apeejay Education in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently launched the ‘National Education Policy Accelerator Programme’ (NEPAP), a first in India to support the technology transformation in line with NEP 2020. This announcement was jointly made by Mr. Aditya Berlia, Co-promoter, Apeejay Education and Sunil PP, Lead – Education, Space and Non-Profits, AISPL, Amazon Web Services India and South Asia during a press conference held virtually.

Why has the programme been launched?

“Academic institutions in India need to reach the digital maturity advised by the NEP 2020, and take advantage of the latest technologies to modernise their systems. They are also required to address evolving learner’s expectations and demands, as well as achieve operating cost savings,” emphasises Mr. Aditya Berlia, co–promoter, Apeejay Education. He further adds, “There is a need to help educational institutions identify and define their problem statements, develop digital solutions, test their efficacies in fail-safe environments, and scale the solutions for the benefit of the education sector.”

What are the benefits of this programme?

The programme is designed to support academic institutions and Indian ed-tech platforms to advance their online learning. It will address the extensive use of technology in teaching, learning, education planning, and management. In addition, NEPAP will aid in the creation of open, interoperable, evolvable, public digital infrastructure in the education sector to support multiple platforms and point solutions.

How can educational institutions seek support?

By conducting digital innovation workshops focused on identifying and prioritising unique challenges of the academic institutions, the programme will provide co-building solutions or proof-of-concepts (POCs) using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Amazon Web Services will drive these workshops based on the Amazon Working Backwards innovation methodology which uses design thinking to identify and define a customer-focused problem or opportunity and develop prototypes. Through the accelerator program, AWS and Apeejay Education aim to support academic institutions with AWS credits and capacity building workshops to build and implement the POCs. Apeejay Education brings with it expertise on the use cases of digital solutions in the education sector and will support with testing the solutions to extend the reach to other institutions across India.

How can Apeejay’s expertise be helpful?

A pioneer in the adoption of technology and cloud computing, Apeejay Stya University – part of Apeejay Education runs its entire learning management, fee and billing, governance, administration as well as admissions systems on Amazon Web Services. The university’s digital readiness enabled it to offer online classes to students within 24 hours of the initial lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and scale its learning management system as needed.

The university accelerated its journey to align with NEP 2020 and effectively engage its 35,000 students and 2,500 faculty members across 26 campuses in India.

Can the digital solutions be customised?

NEPAP will create the NEP Solution Finder, a catalogue of NEP 2020-aligned technology solutions developed by ed-techs in India. The NEP Solution Finder will list solutions tailor-made for the education sector, covering aspects such as digital transformation, administrative services, governance reform services, academic and curriculum restructuring, financial restructuring, local language support, among others.

What is in it for Ed-tech platforms?

“Supporting the core mission of providing quality education and delivering most strategic institutional priorities, we aim to bring together academic institutions and Indian ed-tech firms to help in the experimentation and development of cloud-based solutions scaled for India’s education sector,” says Sunil PP, lead—education, space, and nonprofits, AISPL, AWS India and South Asia.