In its endeavour for ‘reaching the unreached’, the National
Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) has been marching
ahead steadily to provide education through Open and
Distance Learning (ODL) mode upto pre degree level to
those who are unable to attend conventional schools for a
variety of socio-economic reasons as well as to those who
for similar reasons missed opportunities to complete school
and developmental education. It has a vision to provide
“sustainable inclusive learning with universal and flexible
access to quality school education and skill development”.
Among other things, the educational programmes of NIOS
provide a ‘safety net’ to school drop outs so that they do
not remain under educated.
The major challenges that India faces today in educational
arena are : (i) the challenge of numbers, (ii) the challenge
of credibility, and (iii) the challenge of quality. As regards
the ODL programme to provide appropriate responses to
these educational challenges, it can be stated that the
revolution brought about by the growth of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) has greatly facilitated
the expansion of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) system
and permitted adopting a flexible, learner friendly and multi
perspective approach to teaching learning process, much
essential for creativity and scholarship leading to total
development of human personality to respond
appropriately to the current education challenges.
NIOS has been working incessantly for more than 25 years
to provide educational opportunities to a varied clientele,
particularly the members of less privileged sections like
scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, women, girls,
differently abled and ex-serivemen etc. It offers Academic
and Vocational Education courses at Secondary, Senior
Secondary and Elementary Education levels through its
5600 study centres across India. Some study centres of
NIOS are in foreign countries also. With more than 27 lakh
learners on its roll, NIOS has emerged as the largest open
schooling system in the world.
NIOS offers relevant and
need based demand driven Vocational Education Courses
in various areas such as Agriculture, Animal Husbandry,
Business and Commerce, Engineering and Technology,
Health and Paramedical, Home Science and Hospitality Management, Computer and Information Technology,
Security and Industrial Safety and Life Enrichment
Programmes at various levels.
NIOS envisages to play a significant role in the skill
development initiative of the Government of India. It has
collaborated with the National Skill Development Agency
(NSDA) as well as with National Skill Development
Corporation (NSDC) to facilitate skill training of Vocational
Education learners involving industry partners in various
aspects of skill development.
With progressive use of ICT, NIOS has come at a stage
where most of the academic and administrative
programmes use ICT. These include (i) management of
student data base, (ii) student information system, (iii)
management of library, (iv) audio, video and multimedia
programmes for benefit of student, (v) use of Mobile
Technology (M-Support) for dissemination of various
information and support services to students, course
materials in DAISY format for learners who are visually
impaired, and Mukta Vidya Vani, an internet based
platform where audio services from NIOS are streamed
24×7.
