An Android mobile phone, a magnifying screen and a speaker are all that a government-run school needs to call itself a digital learning centre, as per the criteria prescribed by the state government which expects teachers to acquire the equipment at their own expense.
The government has declared 11 districts, many of which are tribal-dominated, as those which have accomplished full digitisation of state-run schools based on these standards. With no standardised apps provided by the government for teaching the curriculum, each school is left to chose or create an app according to the teacher’s choice.
While the government claims to have digitised 25,000 schools, it appears to have violated its own guidelines issued in a Government Resolution on June 22, 2015 with respect to the Digital School movement.
In its GR, the state had promised a tablet to every public school. It has also said that a school having an LCD projector and a big TV screen would be ready to function as a digital school, although the state isn’t providing the equipment. Nine months down the line, it has taken a U-turn and declared that a teacher-owned smartphone qualifies the institution as a ‘digital school’.
In his letter dated March 20 and addressed to the education authorities in Gadchiroli, Nandurbar, Parbhani, Nanded and Hingoli districts, Education Commissioner Dr Purushottam Bhapkar stressed on the need for digital education to boost the performance of students in government schools, which has touched a low because of the Right to Education Act, 2009.
Explaining the procedure to claim the tag of 100 per cent ‘mobile digital’ school, Dr Bhapkar in this letter has asked teachers to “buy a speaker” and a “mobile screen magnifier”, clearly assuming that every teacher will already have an Android mobile phone. “The entire country is keeping a watch on your district. History is being written. Won’t you be the witness and participant of it? I am sure you want to do it. Then why are you waiting? Start from today,” the letter urged teachers.
With March 31 being the deadline, Dr Bhapkar told The Hindu that government schools have been fully digitised in all 11 districts of the state. “In all, 25,000 schools are digitised,” he claimed.
The other six districts are Palghar, Bhandara, Gondiya, Chandrapur, Buldhana and Ahmednagar.
“It is an effort to attract children to government schools. Digitising schools is very easy as it doesn’t need anything but a mobile phone, magnifying screen and a speaker. It’s very cheap, maybe Rs 1,000 or Rs 1,500 and so it’s not difficult for them (teachers) to spend on it. Apps are already available and many of our tech-savvy teachers have made their own apps to teach students. There is an app for each subject and for each standard,” Dr Bhapkar said.
The government prescription for digital schools hasn’t gone down well with everyone. Kishore Darak, a Pune-based independent researcher in elementary education, said, “This once again shows the state’s withdrawal from the education of the poor and marginalised. Moreover, only the equipment without pedagogically-sound content would merely create an illusion of digitisation. When people come out of the illusion, their diminishing faith in public schools will erode further and may strengthen privatisation of education.”
Govt has declared
a teacher-owned smartphone means the institution is
a ‘digital school’
