Edtech gets a warning but doubtful if it will work

Indian edtech firms have raised $5.77 billion in funding in 2021 till October this year

Edtech in India has grown by leaps and bounds through the pandemic when educational institutions were closed and youngsters carried on attending classes and interacting with teachers online via the internet. The edtech world is peopled by firms that deliver online and remote learning.

Explosive growth is never orderly and predictably there is a flood of anguished complaints from parents that they have received the short end of the stick and feel duped into having paid for getting next to nothing.

Such is the level of discontent that the government has been forced to issue an advisory listing dos and don’ts for all the stakeholders, which is a kind of a warning to the firms in the sector that they better change their ways or else official regulations will follow. But it is doubtful if the advisory will work so that the sector does not require formal regulation. Indeed, it is also doubtful if even the latter will work.

It is possible to go to the root of the problem straightaway by noting that the advisory is unlikely to be of much help for those who need it the most, as they do not have the knowledge base to be able to examine the legal implications of the contracts they sign.

They sent their children to school in the first place because they felt some education, any education, would open the door to better jobs and a better life. Then when the lockdown came and their children were bewildered by what they were taught online without physical contact and barely any kind of interaction with the teacher and other children, they opted for aggressively marketed online educational help with coaching and individual counselling and paid out what were princely sums to them, only to realise not too far down the line that they had been had.

What is startling is that it is not just the small fly-by-night operators in the sector who have given it a bad name. The problem goes right upto the top. A major object of complaints is Byju’s, the world’s, not just India’s, highest valued edtech firm, which has invested in it some of the globally best known private equity firms like Tiger Global and General Atlantic.

The BBC reports the case of an accountant who took a Rs 35,000 loan, which Byju’s helped him get, to buy for his son a two-year maths and science programme which included face-to-face coaching and feedback to the parent from a counsellor. When the parent was dissatisfied and asked for a refund, Byju’s first declined and then paid up when the BBC queried them on the matter. Plus three verdicts from consumer courts on other disputes have gone against Byju’s.

To be fair, Byju’s has innumerable satisfied customers and is credited with deft use of technology to make learning interesting when most Indian children still learn by rote. Focusing on it is simply to underline that consumer complaints are endemic in the industry. The industry’s problems stem from trying to run too fast.

The government’s advisory cautions parents against falling for online services with a free component, particularly when parents too poor to pay the whole amount upfront have to opt for signing an electronic fund transfer mandate or activating an auto-debit feature. Read the ‘terms and conditions’ carefully, do a detailed background check of the company and ask for a tax invoice before going in for a subscription based product, says the advisory.

Make sure the content offered tallies with the child’s syllabus and the child will be able to easily comprehend what is being offered, continues the advisory. Activate parental control as a safety measure. Don’t opt for something where there is no provision for filing grievances. Don’t blindly trust advertisements and sign up for loans. Avoid installing mobile edtech apps without verifying their authenticity. Avoid credit/debit card registration and fix an upper limit on the value of a single transaction. Don’t blindly trust ‘success stories’ and don’t share your bank account details.

As for edtech companies, they should not advertise or lead the public to believe that an institution or what it is offering is official, recognised, authorised, accredited, approved, registered and affiliated unless they can substantiate such claims. While advertising they should abide by the general rules of the Advertising Standards Council of India.

After the advisory was issued, several edtech companies have expressed the need for self-regulation by the sector so as to encourage responsible behaviour before the sector is subjected to official regulation. Some players have found the regulations to be constructive as they seek to put the interests of the learner at the centre of the whole process and prevent mis-selling and unethical practices.

But education activists have their doubts if the advisory will achieve its aim, as it seems to be a half-hearted effort. Little will be gained by asking for sticking to ASCI guidelines as the organisation is “toothless”, able to give the culprits only a rap on the knuckles. If the government was truly serious about the advisory then it should have been announced by either the prime minister or a senior minister to signal the seriousness.

There seems to be little chance that the advisory will have a positive impact. Rampant mis-selling cannot be ignored but complying with official regulation will add to cost and can lead to harassment. The only way in which students can be served better is for their parents to do due diligence before buying a product from an edtech company but many parents simply don’t have the education needed for that. Which is why they are willing to pay through their nose for their children to get some education.