The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) recently revamped its guidelines pertaining to education advertisements. The updated norms aim to address the problematic stereotypes and negative portrayals in ads for educational institutions, programmes, and platforms. This initiative, concluded in April 2023 following public consultation, focuses on one of India’s crucial sectors—education.
The Annual Complaints Report 2022-23 from ASCI ranked education second among sectors with the highest number of violating ads, constituting 13.8% of total non-compliant ads. Although ASCI’s previous guidelines necessitated educational entities to back their ad claims with evidence, the new rules take a step further, emphasizing the importance of student mental and physical well-being in ads.
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The revised guidelines mandate that education ads, spanning universities, schools, coaching classes, and EdTech platforms, avoid gender or appearance-based stereotypes and refrain from presenting low-scoring students as failures.
In addition to complying with ASCI’s self-regulation code and previous education sector guidelines, ads must now adhere to a set of additional rules. These include the avoidance of promoting unhealthy habits, negative portrayals of low-scoring students, creation of false urgency, and associating subjects or success with certain genders or stereotypical traits.
Shri Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, expressed hope that the industry would abide by the updated guidelines, warning against misleading ads as a violation of the Consumer Protection Act. Manisha Kapoor, CEO and Secretary General, ASCI, affirmed the new rules’ focus on student well-being, promising that ASCI would remain committed to consumer protection and regularly update their code to address emerging concerns. This news is based on Exchange4Media’s report, “ASCI updates guidelines for education ads to tackle stereotypes, negative portrayals”.
