[LINK] Indian education agreement with Australia to boost e-learning?

[Tom Worthington]

The Australian Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, has signed a Joint
Ministerial Statement on education with the Indian Minister for Human
Resource Development, Kapil Sibal:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2010/04/indian-education-agreement-with.html#statement>.

The agreement covers schools, vocational education and training (VET), 
higher education, technical and professional education. Australia
will help provide with Indian teacher training and exchange for
teaching, research and curriculum development. Work is also under way in
the vocational education sector.

The obvious implication is Australian university and TAFE setting up in
India. What might be more interesting is cooperative arrangements for
e-learning online between India and Australia. Current educational
practices in Australia are not efficient enough for the scale of the
Indian market, being the equivalent of the "horse and buggy" era before
the invention of the car production line. As an example of what is
needed, last October, Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) announced
3G mobile education for its 2.5 million of students.

The India-Australia agreement covers:

1. qualification and quality frameworks
2. skills demand and emerging needs areas
3. credit transfer arrangements
4. supporting the Bureau for Vocational Education and Training
Collaboration (BVET) and similar
5. education, training and research
6. exchange of officials and educators for professional development
7. developing and monitoring standards and regulations for education agents
8. An India-Australia Education Council

Available are:

    1. Australia Consolidates Educational Links with India, Media
release, The Joint Ministerial Statement, Hon Julia Gillard MP, issued 8
April 2010 (pre-dated 9 April, 2010):
<http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Gillard/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_100408_141605.aspx>.
    2. Joint Ministerial Statement, Between the Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations of the Government of Australia and
the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India, 8
April 2010 (56Kbytes PDF):
<http://aei.gov.au/AEI/GovernmentActivities/GovernmentRelations/BilateralRelationships/Joint_Statement_India_pdf.htm>.

ANU is hosting a forum for educators Monday and I will be talking about
how I have done online vocational postgraduate education (with much of
the class being Indian IT and engineering students):
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/collaborative_eteaching/>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890