The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Computer-aided education in 1,571 government high schools

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 29, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Computer-aided education in 1,571 government high schools

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: Educomp Solutions Limited, an education service provider, has signed a Rs. 109-crore agreement with the State Government to provide computer-aided education in 1,571 government high schools.

According to the agreement signed recently, Educomp will complete the project over five years. It will be on a turnkey basis, involving setting up and running computer education programmes in schools. The programmes include comprehensive education infrastructure implementation, training teachers and content development projects, officials of the Department of State Education, Research and Training (DSERT) told The Hindu.

The Government’s aim is to achieve 100 per cent computer literacy among high school students under the computer-aided learning (CAL) programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Educom will make computer education accessible to the remotest location across the State by introducing computer education, computer-aided education and by providing IT infrastructure in schools.

The company will look after maintenance of computers, distribute textbooks to schoolchildren, and provide training to one teacher in every school. Computer education will be provided to students of 8th, 9th and 10th standards, according to the officials.

The programme was taken up under the computer-aided learning (CAL) project of the Centre. The Centre and the State Government would share the cost in the ratio of 75:25. The programme would cover all government high schools in the State by next year.

They said Educomp had a track record of implementing large-scale public-private-partnership projects and the company worked closely with various State and Central agencies, Ministries of Information Technology, Human Resources Development, and State governments to bridge the digital divide.

In the fist phase of the programme, which commenced a few years ago, 1,000 schools had been covered. Later, 150 and 88 high schools had been covered under the revised class project and the 11th Finance Scheme of the Centre, respectively. With this, the remaining 753 schools would be covered under CAL programme. The Education Department had prepared a programme to cover these schools by next year, the officials said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka