U.S. tutoring outsourced to India Kids brush up their math with online teachers

By George Iype, India Abroad, via IPA Voices That Must Be Heard, ILCA buttociate Member

Thrice a week Eliza Kinston, a seventh grader at a Santa Barbara school in California, logs on to the Internet from home.

No, she does not chat with her schoolmates. Instead, Kinston listens to math lessons by Mary Sebastian, an Indian e-teacher, located in Bangalore. The computer screens that Kinston and Sebastian use have digital writing pads, through which they communicate using digital pencils.

"Many American students are duds in math. The seventh grader in the United States does not know as much math as my fourth grade son does," exclaims Sebastian as she winds up her e-tutoring.

But she says Kinston loves her as a math teacher because, thanks to her, the student is now confident of clearing her examination this year.

Over the years, the U.S. administration has been alarmed at the increasing failure rate of American students in schools. For instance, a survey last year found nearly 40 percent of seventh-grade students in America failed in math and English language examinations. Thus, Indian teachers like Sebastian have come to the aid of American students who are grappling with difficult subjects.

Hundreds of teachers across India are e-tutoring difficult subjects like math, physics, chemistry, geography and even English grammar to thousands of school students across the United States.

The neighborhood tuition teacher in India is riding the information technology-enabled services wave, earning in the process anything between $10 to $40 an hour.

Enter education process outsourcing (EPO). Business Process Outsourcing may be the rage these days, but EPO is fast catching up across India, turning the country into a brain-bank for school children, colleges and educational insbreastutions in the United States.

"Education being outsourced to India is becoming big business. We do not have any hard figures but the demand from abroad, especially the United States, is growing because of an acute dearth of good tuition teachers there," said Shantanu Prakash, chief executive officer at Educomp Datamatics Ltd., a leading Indian company that has tied up with scores of schools in the United States for education outsourcing.

To get a sense of what Prakash is saying, consider this:

Every year, America needs nearly 120,000 teachers, but the availability is restricted to only five to eight percent of that number. But it is not easy for an Indian teacher to get a job in U.S. schools because of stringent qualification tests. Thus emerged the concept of online tutoring in which India has now become the prime supplier.

India has four million teachers. Nearly 500,000 of them are well trained in computers and new technology.

But why is the American school education suddenly being outsourced to India?

Education consultants in India say the trend began in 2002 when the George Bush Administration pbutted a law called the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The law, meant to improve teaching standards and results in schools, insisted that schools funded by the Administration would not get state funds if they did not improve their performance. The NCLB Act has asked all schools in the United States to meet the 100 percent proficiency goal by 2014.

Since the Act was pbutted, schools that were unable to improve the performance of their students have been depending on tuitions as the best means to remedy the situation.

"But then another problem cropped up. America does not have enough tuition teachers. So outsourcing of tuition lessons has become a necessity," says Bangalore-based education consultant Srinivasa Raju.

Raju says Indian teachers are regarded as "the best across the world." He added, "India's quality of education is good. This has helped the country get the outsourcing contract from U.S. schools."

And how does education outsourcing work?

The student, an American, and the teacher, an Indian, log on to a web site at a pre-determined time for a regimented course, which could be math or English or any other subject. The teacher gives an introduction to the student and gives him-her a problem to solve.

The technology used is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Along with this, a proprietary software is used by both the teacher and the student, with two-way voice interaction as well as a chat room (for text messages); interaction over this software is on an electronic whiteboard format. While it is a one-on-one session for the student, the teacher usually attends to three students simultaneously on different links. The session lasts for an hour and the student can ask questions pertaining to the topic.

For companies like Educomp, getting and training e-teachers in India to tutor students in the United States has been an easy task.

Satya Narayanan, chairman of Career Launcher, another leading player in the EPO arena, said outsourcing of education from the United States is a "big opportunity that is fast emerging."

Career Launcher is one of the leading global education companies based in India. The company not only provides tutoring to American students, it also provides a bouquet of education-support services such as buttessment, e-books, tests, learning systems and audiovisual education materials.

Narayanan says India stands to gain in EPO because of its excellent school education system, competent English-speaking teachers and superior intellectual power compared to compebreastors like China, the Philippines, Singapore and other Asia-Pacific countries.

Career Launcher has nearly 1,500 American students on its online rolls for math tutoring alone. To teach them how to solve math problems translates into nearly 40,000 tutoring hours.

Considering that Career Launcher charges anywhere between $20 to $30 per hour, this translates into big money.

Companies like Educomp Datamatics and Career Launcher follow different models to get the education business. Career Launcher has tied up with leading education service providers in the United States to outsource the lessons online. The service providers, better known in the United States as supplemental education service providers, are the leading tutoring centers for major schools in America.

But the biggest problem the education service providers face is a dearth of good teachers. So they have outsourced clbuttes to India where it can be done at half the cost over broadband links.

On the other hand, Educomp Datamatics has tied up directly with many U.S. schools for tutoring. Last year, it participated in the National Education Computing Conference in New Orleans and approached many schools for work. The schools that Educomp caters to include the Franklin School in Santa Barbara and Silver Oak Elementary School, California.

Educomp has also launched a pilot school program called Smart Clbutt to develop content geared toward U.S. state standards for American schools.