The Jomtien World Conference on Education for All in 1990, and the E-9 Summit resolution of 1993 called for a massive mobilization of efforts to achieve universal elementary education for all, and subsequently secondary education for all. Simultaneous efforts have been contemplated to provide educational and training access to the disadvantaged and the differently abled, and link education/schooling to social and community development. Open schooling and basic education at a distance have got established, in the last two decades, as strong systemic intervention mechanisms to cater to the quality educational needs of millions of deprived people, with very low cost. Massive developments in information and communications technology have opened up wider possibilities of convergence of methods, media, resources and technologies to wider access and equity in educational provision. The National Policy on Education (NPE 1986) of the Government of India underlines that the future of educational delivery belongs to open and distance learning. Many of the world governments have committed to ODL and open schooling for long-term educational expansion.

With massive expansion of open schooling

and open basic education in the world, a strong need has been felt to continuously orient, train and upgrade a variety of functionaries involved in these areas. The Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India and the National Institute of Open Schooling, India have, in collaboration with and or the support from the Commonwealth of Learning, Canada, have established an International Centre for Training in Open Schooling (ICTOS) at NOS to address to the training needs of the functionaries involved in open schooling and open basic education. The certificate and diploma programmes mentioned below are part of this effort of the ICTOS.