Blockchain in Draft National Education Policy 2019: Much needed medicine for our education scenario

The draft national education policy ’19 is quite progressive in its approach and might set the stage for blockchain technology to become an integral part of our education system.

It is nothing new to state that PM Modi has paid significant attention to ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and ‘Ease of Living’ over the past 5 years. This is represented in his policies and programmes in order to build a new India. Now, with the Draft National Education Policy 2019 available for deliberations to the general public, it is time to add ‘Educational Reforms’ to that list.

The NEP is a multi-pronged strategy to overhaul our education scene from A-Z. Apart from general recommendations about setting up of new institutions, and addressing the issue of succession planning and filling up of vacancies, what caught our eye in this revolutionary draft policy most, is the mention of latest technologies to bring about positive change in our education scenario.

The proposal which is currently open to the public for feedback, talks about using technologies like block chain for checking fake degrees, making use of virtual reality, implementing AI in education, and setting up a dedicated national educational technology forum in a timely manner. If implemented well, the NEP 2019 has the potential to make sure it is the last policy written by humans before AI drafts the next one.

But are you sure about how this technology can help students and administrators? To better understand the kind of impact blockchain can have in the education system and to be able to predict how this technology will impact us, let us take a brief look at how this technology works.

Blockchain is like a public account book that automatically records and verifies transactions. It is not owned by any central person or authority. Rather, a system composed of many personal computers stores information, thus leaving no room for a middleman. It is distributed and decentralised so that it can not be taken down or corrupted by any single person out of animosity or theft, making it very secure.

We’ve identified ways that Blockchain could be deployed by institutions and community-based organisations to improve learning opportunities:

• Academic credentials must be universally recognised and verifiable. In India, verifying and ascertaining academic credentials in the forms of certificates and degree’s remains a largely manual process, thus exposing it to frequent cases of counterfeits. This manual process is also very time consuming as it is heavy on paper documentation and requires case-by-case checking. Blockchain is a great way to streamline verification procedures in order to reduce fake claims of unearned educational credits.

Towards Blockchain, a cutting edge technological company has emerged as the torchbearer for the Blockchain Ecosystem in our country and has an offering ‘Signy’ that can solve this dilemma. Signy is a certificate issuing application built on disruptive technologies and uses AI to reduce the risks of fake degrees and certificates. SIGNY is a document creation, signing and sharing platform. Using KYC Wallet as the base, SIGNY becomes more powerful as the user’s identity is clearly verified.

• Blockchain could help solve the Identity crisis in the education industry: With the increased proliferation being seen in learning apps and services everyday, identity management is emerging as a big problem in education. Blockchain powered apps could help users carry their identity around the internet. Users will get to access apps on decentralised networks and have data portability.
• Infrastructure security: As schools in their attempt to become more secure, add more security cameras and sensors, there is an increased need to protect their networks from hackers. Blockchain’s ability to provide tamper-proof ledgers in order to share security data across device networks might come handy.
• Cloud storage: As researchers in education institutions store more data, Blockchain enabled cloud storage could offer safer and potentially cheaper alternatives.

Because the use of blockchain in the education space is still at a very nascent stage and is largely unexplored, there are bound to be a lot of unanswered questions. What is clear, however, is that the possibilities extend till infinity.

At last, we must never forget that ‘A policy is only as good as its implementation’, and with the draft now in the final phase of public comments, there is no doubt of the sweeping reforms in education becoming a reality.