ADDING AN e TO EDUCATION

RESPONDING TO THE URGENT NEED TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO EDUCATION, THE GOVERNMENT STRENGTHENS ITS E-LEARNING INITIATIVES TO ENSURE A BROADER REACH

- Kaushik Deka

If there was any good that came of the global pandemic, the digital turn towards online education would certainly be a contender. And even as the pandemic recedes, the virtue that the necessity bred now seems all set to stay. Even as students across the country return to brick and mortar schools, the classroom’s virtual avatar is not likely to vanish into the ether. Hence the serious consideration of the hybrid model, which offers the best of both the worlds—the socio-emotional bonding of a physical classroom, and broader access to education through the online medium.

Cognisant of the need for access, equity and quality, the government launched its PM e-Vidya programme in 2020 to take the classroom to the student if they couldn’t come to the classroom. With schools reopening now, rather than suspending the initiative, the Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech on February 1, announced that the government will expand its ‘One Class, One TV programme’ from 12 to 200 channels to “impart supplementary teaching and build a resilient mechanism for education delivery”. It was the first official acknowledgement of the fact that the country’s children had lost almost two years of formal education, particularly in government schools and rural areas, and needed to be compensated for that loss.