Govt move to give free laptops to class IX students
State school education minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil on Thursday said the government plans to provide laptops free of cost to class IX students across the state.
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State school education minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil on Thursday said the government plans to provide laptops free of cost to class IX students across the state.
Vikhe-Patil said that the government was looking at the possibility of public- private partnerships to facilitate the project. Providing laptops will not just make students computer-savvy but also help in making their families computer literate. We are looking at some scheme or donation for this purpose. Some amount could be set by the government for this purpose.
He said that the idea was still a proposal and could be implemented for all 18 lakh class 9 students of public and private schools. If implemented,our state will be the first in the country to have taken measures to ensure family literacy, he added.
The minister said that he was in talks with NGOs like Vedanta Foundation,with whom the Maharashtra Prathamik Shikshan Parishad (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan) signed a memorandum of understanding for providing content towards Computer Aided Learning (CAL) and Computer Education Programme (CEP) for students from standards sixth to eighth in 2,950 government schools in all 34 districts free of cost,on Thursday.
The three-year,Rs 12-crore project will include providing,installing and maintaining the e-content and train teachers for each of the 2,950 schools.
Suman Didwania,trustee,Vedanta Foundation said that there would also be assessment of the implementation and effectiveness of this project with a visit to each school at least once a week.
Sanjay Kumar,school education secretary said that such PPPs were needed in the education sector to ensure speedy and effective implementation of government schemes. He also said that in the joint review committee meeting held two weeks ago,it was found that Maharashtra was third after Kerala and Delhi in terms of successful implementation of SSA in the country.
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