Sharing technology can help billions of children realize their educational dreams

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4 is very close to my heart. Its ambition to "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all" is arguably the key to creating more affluent, fairer societies.

And with the emergence of digital public goods (DPGs), I believe we’re now a step nearer to achieving this goal.

Because DPGs involve open-source software, they are freely available for all governments to use. This means they can adapt and scale DPGs to the needs of different sectors and population groups at an affordable cost – rather than spend huge amounts of scarce funds on proprietary technologies. And, while DPGs may not yet be a familiar concept, they are already delivering some amazing outcomes for citizens around the world. You can find out more about them in our report .

Education is one sector where DPGs can make a significant difference. Many emerging nations suffer from lack of schools, insufficient access to learning materials, and digital skills gaps among teachers. During the pandemic, we saw declining literacy rates among the poorest communities who were unable to enjoy the full benefits of remote learning.

But now, in the world’s most populous country, India, a DPG called DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) is pushing the boundaries of education.

India has one of the world’s largest education systems with more than 260 million students. 9.6 million teachers and 1.5 million schools, spread across urban and rural regions. You can imagine the complexities of providing consistent and inclusive education standards across such a vast nation with huge extremes in wealth and access.

DIKSHA is a digital platform that helps students learn and teachers teach. It supports 36 different Indian languages and can be easily customized to the needs of each of India’s 28 states and eight union territories. A local body in a local state can digitally access content from physical textbooks in the education system via unique QR codes, making pretty much every textbook available to every pupil and teacher.

This inspiring program – the world's largest digital public infrastructure in education – has really taken off. More than 60 boards of education across 35 states are using in excess of 300,000 pieces of content taken from 600 million-plus textbooks.

DIKSHA is also having a tremendous impact on the professional development of teachers, with numerous online programs that give them the skills to teach more effectively – including using tech-based solutions in classrooms. This has plugged a big gap in training at a very modest cost.

In just three years, 2.5 million teachers have received Elementary training and a further 3.5 million have undergone Secondary training from the 5,000 courses available on the platform.

And because everything is digital, those running DIKSHA can monitor how well it works and use the insights to make continuous improvements to content, as well as assess children’s learning outcomes and teachers’ effectiveness.

Over the next few years, DIKSHA hopes to use AI to overcome the language barriers that prevent many Indian pupils from accessing content (it’s estimated that there are around 1,700 different languages spoken across the country).

The development of DIKSHA has been helped by the World Bank, as part of a US$500 million support package to the government of India. According to Shabnam Sinha, Lead Education Specialist at the World Bank in India, “… if you look at the economic returns of this instrument, it is incalculable, because I think perhaps it's one of the smartest advanced interventions of the government of India.”

India's highly successful venture into DPG in education is now being shared in other parts of the world, especially in Africa – once again highlighting the collaborative nature of DPGs. Find out more about the inspirational DIKSHA story in our recent podcast .

What we’ve seen in India’s education system is being replicated worldwide across a wide range of other public DPG initiatives across health, social care, employment, transport, and infrastructure. My EY colleagues estimate the annual DPG market will grow to US$100b by 2030.

Seeing education finally enter the digital age in this way is immensely satisfying, and gives me great hope that we can use DPGs to fulfil the UN SDGs and build a world where every citizen has the chance to fulfil their potential – which is surely what education is all about.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

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