EdTech customers face infra, quality and refund issues; 96% seek government regulation: survey

About 66% of participants in a survey conducted by LocalCircles, an online platform, agreed to have uniform government regulations across all EdTech platforms. The majority of respondents raised issues regarding the infrastructure of these EdTech platforms during sessions, the inefficiency of teaching staff, and refund policies.

EdTech platforms are educational technologies that use computers, software, online applications, and education to help students learn online.

Survey results

The LocalCircles survey took place in 323 districts from April 1 to May 31, 2022, with approximately 27,000 respondents. The survey found that at least 69% of respondents faced infrastructure issues and deprivation of vital services required when attending online courses.

They further mentioned that the quality of teaching was not convincing enough and that there were serious problems with the subscription and reimbursement system, as reported in the Mint.

The report dissected the problem-based responses, indicating that 9% of consumers had infrastructure issues, 19% disliked the efficiency of teaching staff, and 10% had issues with reimbursement. Additionally, 11% found that they or their family members were experiencing both infrastructure and personnel issues. While 2% had both reimbursement and infrastructure issues, as reported by Business Standard.

Government regulation needed

The survey report mentioned that 96% of participants who had taken online coaching courses from EdTech companies wanted the government to create a policy to make reimbursement and subscription rules transparent and available on websites and disclosed when submitting an offer.

“Consumers have reported that some edtech platforms engage in predatory marketing practices and unethical behavior, including automatic charging of course fees by parents despite parents having declared their wish. to interrupt the lesson. This led the government to issue a warning against such practices of some e-learning programs while considering a common policy to regulate the industry last year.“, says the report.

Last year, an attempt at self-regulation created an independent industry body – India EdTech Consortium (IEC), which was placed under the Indian Internet and Mobile Association to address some of these issues.

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