Government Initiatives: Providing Marginalized Communities with Free Digital Tools as a Step Towards Equity

The National Education Policy 2020 calls for investment in digital infrastructure, online teaching platforms and tools, virtual labs, digital repositories, online assessments, technology and pedagogy for online teaching-learning etc., with the promotion of multilingualism and the power of language in teaching and learning through innovative and experiential methods. NEP (para 4.23) further mentions that certain subjects, skills, and capacities should be learned by all students. These skills also include digital literacy, coding, and computational thinking which are promoted through various digital initiative.

A comprehensive initiative called PM e-VIDYA was initiated as part of Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan on 17th May, 2020, which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education.

The PM eVidya initiative are available to all the students across all the states free of cost.

The key components of PM eVidya includes:

• DIKSHA the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in States/UTs and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades (one nation, one digital platform).
• As per the Union Budget announcement for Financial Year 2022-23, the 12 DTH Channels have been expanded to 200 PM e-VIDYA DTH TV Channels to enable all States to provide supplementary education in various Indian languages for classes 1-12.
• Extensive use of Radio, Community Radio and CBSE Podcast- Shiksha Vani.
• Special e-content for visually and hearing impaired developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/ YouTube.
• To promote crucial critical thinking skill and to give space for creativity, it has been proposed to establish 750 virtual labs and 75 Skilling e-labs by 2023. The Virtual Labs are proposed for Science and Mathematics subjects for Classes 6th – 12th, and Skilling e-labs would provide for simulated learning environment. A vertical on Virtual Labs has been created on DIKSHA platform. Training on Virtual labs has been conducted through PM eVidya DTH TV channels for teachers and teacher educators across the country.

Further, ICT and Digital initiatives component of centrally sponsored scheme of Samagra Shiksha covers Government and Aided schools having classes VI to XII. Under this component financial assistance is provided for establishing ICT Lab and Smart Classrooms in schools.

To assist students preparing for competitive exams across the country, a SATHEE portal has been developed in collaboration with IIT Kanpur. Feedback on the beta version of the platform is currently being collected from students from all over the country.

The information was given by the Minister of State for Education, Smt. Annpurna Devi in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.