COL is working to advance its mission as a transformative force in inclusive, technology-enabled education and skills development across eight Commonwealth countries in Asia. Aligned with India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, COL, through its regional centre, the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), has focused on bridging the gap between traditional educational outcomes and the evolving needs of the global labour market.
KEY PILLARS
Key pillars in COL’s work over the past year have included the vocationalisation of education, the ethical integration of AI, and the empowerment of marginalised communities through digital literacy and community media. Through strategic partnerships with government bodies such as the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), COL is scaling its impact, reaching over 130,000 educators and supporting a pathway to vocationalise education for four million learners by 2030.
At the tertiary level, COL has focused on making employability frameworks more accountable to learner outcomes. Working with one national and all 17 state open universities, institutions adopted results-based management to align curricula with labour-market needs. Teachers remain central to COL’s approach to ethical AI. The Teacher-in-the-Loop AI initiative engaged 80 secondary-level mathematics teachers in the CBSE schools through boot camps, followed by a 140-hour professional development programme reaching 1,400 teachers nationwide. By positioning educators as co-designers of AI-supported pedagogy, the programme reinforced COL’s principle that technology must augment, not replace, professional judgement, while contributing to improved classroom practice.
TURNING INCLUSION INTO ACTION
Inclusion was also translated into action. Specialised training and curriculum design to support learners with specific learning disabilities (SLD) were developed in partnership with India’s Ministry of Education and the foundation ChangeInkk, laying the groundwork for an online course on inclusive employability. To enhance the identification of SLD and the development of individualised education plans, COL facilitated targeted training programmes in Maldives and Sri Lanka. Building on this progress, a multi-country stakeholder meeting was convened in Gaborone, Botswana during COL’s Eleventh Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, fostering regional collaboration and strengthening the basis for sustained partnership with education ministries across Commonwealth Asia.
EMPOWERING WOMEN AND GIRLS
In line with its Empowering Women and Girls project, COL has also embarked on an innovative programme to address the needs of young women and girls living in tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India — growing urban centres that are emerging hubs for technology, investment, and real estate — and to prepare them for online work in the gig economy. Launched in collaboration with Bharat Innovation Global, this programme aims to equip 1,000 young Indian women aged 18–35 with skills in critical thinking, spoken English, and job-readiness for the gig economy.
Together, these efforts demonstrate COL’s commitment to systemic educational transformation. By leveraging AI, OER, and strategic partnerships, COL has not only expanded access to quality education but also strengthened pathways for sustainable, lifelong learning aligned with the socio-economic priorities of the Government of India and the wider Commonwealth Asia region. As 2026 unfolds, the partnerships and frameworks now in place position COL to scale impact in the region, moving from pilots towards system-level change and from access alone towards access with outcomes.
This story was originally published in the April 2026 issue of Connections. Read the full issue: https://hdl.handle.net/11599/6130
