The Hindu : National : Rajasthan joins with U.N. task force to enable its education systems

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jan 23, 2006

National

National

Rajasthan joins with U.N. task force to enable its education systems

Anand Parthasarathy

State's one lakh schools targeted for training under the ambitious project

Bangalore: Just one day after it formally launched its operations in India, the United Nations-funded Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSI) joined hands last week with Rajasthan in an ambitious project to e-nable its school education system.

In a first-of-its-kind partnership in India, where the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) are the other two players, the State has kick-started the Rajasthan Education Initiative which is aimed at encompassing all one lakh schools and making them the focal points of ongoing schemes such as Project GRACE (Girls of Rajasthan and Computer Education); District Computer Education Centres (DCECs) in all 32 districts; departmental computerisation down to block level and EDUSAT ( satellite)-based teacher training.

Soon after he signed the formal memorandum of understanding in Jaipur with GeSCI's Ireland-based Executive Director, Stephen Nolan, Rajasthan's Principal Secretary for School Education, C.K. Mathew, briefed The Hindu on telephone and pointed out that the State had been a quiet performer on the educational front for over a decade. Between the 1991 census and the one conducted a decade later, literacy had almost doubled to over 61 per cent (from 20 to 44 per cent among females and from 54 to 76 per cent among males).

Much of the State's affirmative action in harnessing Information Technology for education was kick-started after the January 2005 World Economic Forum Summit in Davos where Rajasthan cannily took lessons from Jordan's own educational initiative and adapted it to its own situation. Fifty per cent of a school child's fees on computer training is underwritten by the State — and Mr. Mathews is confident that the partnership with private players on one hand and U.N. task forces on the other will see the State quickly vie for a top spot in the national league of computer-enabled education systems.

GeSCI's Bangalore-based Programme Director for India, Aruna Sundararajan, said the U.N.-financed agency had chosen Rajasthan as its first strategic partner in India. "We are very excited at what is happening here and hope not just to support their educational schemes, but to learn useful lessons in the process," she said. While its role would be mostly facilitatory, it would endeavour to provide some funding within its budgetary constraints, she clarified.

Mrs. Sundararajan was formerly the Secretary in charge of Information Technology for Kerala, where she is credited with steering a number of people oriented IT initiatives such as the Akshaya e-literacy programme and the FRIENDS e-payment gateways.

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