This article of mine recently appeared in www.opensource.com
Open Source: Modernizing India's education system
Over the last few years, open source adoption has been growing within India's education system. Five years ago, the South Indian state of Kerala, pioneered open source in schools with its famous IT@Schools project, that now covers three million students from the 5th-10 standards, involves 200,000 teachers across 4071 schools. Since then, other Indian states like Karnataka, Gujarat, Assam, West Bengal and others have made open source a key part of their school education initiatives.
Many schools in India do not have proper premises, blackboards or toilets. In these circumstances, equipping schools with computers seems like a challenge, despite the fact that the Indian Government has decided to spend 6 percent of GDP on education. Proprietary software vendors offer deep discounts for schools and spend close to $20 million on “Train-The-Trainer” programs that enable school teachers to impart computer education to their students. Despite these blandishments, many governments find proprietary software an expensive way of computerizing their schools. For example, a study by the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, found that the Kerala government's usage of OSS saved it Rs 49 crore ($10.2 million).
More at:
http://opensource.com/government/10/4/oss-one-best-tools-modernizing-india-e...