Kerala set to digitise its government schools

Kerala is taking another pioneering step in education—it is turning some 45,000 classrooms in 4,775 government and government-aided schools into digital in the country’s largest IT deployment programme in the sector. 

These classrooms will be equipped with laptops, multimedia projectors, whiteboards and sound systems, and hooked through highspeed Internet to a central server that hosts educational content. Computer labs of these schools will be provided with LCD TVs, HD cameras, multi-function printers and UPS. 

Kerala’s hi-tech classroom project, announced in the first budget of the Pinarayi Vijayan government in 2016 and formally inaugurated by the chief minister last week, will initially cover Class 8 to Class 12. The Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board, which is funding the project, has allocated Rs 493.50 crore for what is also the largest deployment of information and communication technology in the state so far. 

To implement the project, the government has transformed the Kerala IT@School programme, a state government project that was launched in 2001 to promote IT activities in high schools, into a government company called Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE). 

“Hi-tech school programme is a holistic integration of components like capacity building, digital content, connectivity, infrastructure, resource portal and e-governance,” said Anvar Sadath, the vice chairman and executive director of KITE. The hi-tech school project is just one component of the Public Education Rejuvenation Mission to improve the quality of general education in the state, he said. 

With the fast growth of the unaided sector and private schools offering CBSE and ICSE syllabuses that parents are increasingly preferring, the government schools in the state have been witnessing a gradual erosion in student enrolment. However, measures announced by the Pinarayi Vijayan government have helped arrest this trend, said government officials. 

“This year, there has been a reverse flow of students — that is, government schools have seen an increase in enrolment,” said Sadath, who estimates an increase of 12,000 students in Class 1 alone. 

Government spokespeople attribute this to the package of measures announced to improve the learning atmosphere in government schools. 

Along with the hi-tech programme, schools have been asked to provide basic facilities in the classroom and computer laboratory. The schools have been told to use the local area development fund of MLAs and MPs as well as donations from alumni associations and parent-teacher associations for this purpose.