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Government school students in Tamil Nadu will be sensitised to internet safety, “hate news” and misinformation through awareness weeks at the beginning of every academic year, Minister for School Education Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi announced in the Assembly on Friday.
In his reply during the discussion on demands for the School Education Department, he said it was important to create awareness at the school level because of the wide prevalence of fake news. The students and teachers would be trained to identify fake news, he said.
Stating that the DMK was to be credited with increasing awareness among members of the public through distribution of free television and enabling many to become software engineers by introducing computer science courses in schools, the Minister said the DMK, however, was at the receiving end of misleading news being spread against it. Lauding the party’s “social media warriors” for tackling misinformation, he said that being affected by fake news was bad, be it a person or a political party.
Teaching Tamil
He said the government would launch the ‘Tamil Mozhi Karpom (Let’s learn Tamil)’ scheme to teach Tamil to children of migrant workers, besides their respective mother tongues. Highlighting the focus on physical education, the Minister said two Sports Schools of Excellence would be created in each district to train students and enable them to participate at district, national and international sporting events. He said the government would ensure the presence of physical education teachers at all government schools.
‘Reading movement’
He further said a ‘reading movement’ would be launched at a cost of ₹10 crore to encourage reading habit among children. At least one teaching post for each subject would be created at middle schools having more than 100 students from Class VI to VIII.
On concerns that the creation of Schools of Excellence and Model Schools would lead to disparities in focus given to government schools, he said the government wanted to bring the facilities at all government schools on a par with those of Schools of Excellence and Model Schools. Making some government schools as Schools of Excellence and Model Schools had shown benefit, with 1,025 students from these schools clearing Joint Entrance Examination (Main) and 300 students poised to clear the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), he said.
Pointing out that a key demand made by MLAs was the reconstruction of school buildings that were demolished because of poor condition, he said the government was paying attention to this under the Professor Anbazhagan School Development Scheme.
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