Annex II. Distance Education (DE): A Key Domestic Policy
Development of DE necessarily takes place within a political
system, in a framework of accepted values and aspirations.
The relevant policy issues under diverse contextual backgrounds,
which have contributed to success of DE in some developing
countries, are charted out below:
In 1986, China implemented a compulsory education policy.
Problems included (a) wide gaps between the availability
and need for trained schoolteachers, (b) resource constraints,
(c) lack of time, and (d) a large geographical area. All
these necessitated using DE as a part of the mission to
bridge educational divides. Assistance from UNICEF provided
further momentum.
As the country was making the transition to modernization
of industry, services and agriculture, there was a huge
opportunity for trained and educated manpower. The policy
was accordingly adopted to diversify DE. Consequently, a
large number of graduates who were trained through DE got
immediate employment. With the nature of manpower requirements
in the emerging sector of economies in the country, DE was
further diversified. In fact, DE was fully institutionalized
and made to decentralize so that local contextual needs
could be appropriately addressed. DE, from 6,000 primary
schools in 1999, is expected to reach more than 20,000 primary
schools by 2003. With the emergence of convergent technologies,
the DE programme in China is also changing to Internet-based
learning.
The contextual dynamics in Thailand, not very different
from China, were influenced by the market economy. The development
of DE was thus focused on addressing human development needs.
The success of DE in Thailand, however, lies in strategic
partnership between government and industry (Thaicom Foundation).
While government, besides holding overall administrative
control, provides necessary regulations, inter-governmental
coordination and budgetary support, the role of industry
has been limited to ensure the availability of a Ku-band
transponder from Thaicom satellite. In 2000, seven channels
were used to beam out DE programmes to 2,700 secondary schools,
which is being expanded to cover 20,000 primary schools
using 14 channels. Today, Thailand DE has been expanded
to neighbouring countries - Cambodia and the Lao People's
Democratic Republic. In India, it has also been a partnership
effort, but between two agencies of government - the Ministry
of Human Resources Development and the Indian Space Research
Organization (ISRO). In all these cases, economy of scale
has contributed to the success of DE.
There are other countries that have also set up excellent
satellite-based educational network for the benefit of their
people. Indonesia provides another outstanding example of
using the transponders on the Palapa satellite for distance
education throughout the archipelago. Mexico's successful
Telesecundaria currently serves as the basis for an expanding
programme called EduSat, which uses the Soldaridad satellite
system and covers the entire country, targeting different
audiences and target groups. Similarly, Brazil has been
using different media - including satellites - to increase
access to formal curriculum and boost the quality of teaching
in a cost-effective way. In both cases, satellite-based
distance education has fully been integrated with the education
policy of the respective governments.
Although there are several examples of DE showing that
it is well suited to large systems and large populations
of learners, it has also been seen to be effective for small
countries and small population. It has been found to be
effective through regional/international cooperation. The
University of the South Pacific (USP), for example, serves
11 countries on many islands, with its campus in Suva, Fiji.
The University of the West Indies (UWI), another regional
university in Africa, serves DE needs for 11 countries through
an Intelsat satellite link. While international cooperation
is important, regional affinity and willingness to share
the resources across the small countries are important in
reducing costs.
Based on analysis of policies that have contributed to
the success of DE programmes in the countries noted above,
it is clear that the success of DE solutions is contingent
upon their being an integrated part of education policies,
investment plans and the creation of budgetary mechanisms
to meet recurrent costs if these are not recovered from
the end-users.
New challenges
Technology developments, driven by market forces, have
greatly increased the number of technology options (or media
options, in the case of DE) currently available. However,
not all media are appropriate in developing countries, as
market forces do not always run parallel to the interests
of these countries. Nevertheless, whatever the choices available
in a particular context, combining a range of different
media and using each medium according to its particular
strength in a certain contextual dynamics, representing
the unique socio-economic and cultural setting of a country,
is an important aspect that can lead towards the formulation
of suitable policies.
Because of the significant impact that the convergent technologies
are having on DE, the main challenge in integrating telematics
is to find suitable policy elements that can achieve recognized
benefits without widening gaps between information rich
and information poor. The overall policy framework concerning
the media for DE may be dovetailed with the national communication
policy itself, while DE as such could be integrated with
the national education policy of the respective government.
This possibility is based on the belief that most developing
countries have recognized the dynamics and vitality of convergent
technologies, and are recasting their communications policies
accordingly. The technology elements of DE, integrated with
communication policies, would continue to take into account
the developments taking place in the convergent technologies.
In its natural combination with communications policy, distance
education, as an integral part of education policy, will
keep embracing linguistic and cultural issues. However,
this combination needs to be studied further, taking into
account the contextual background of a country.
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