Banka experiment goes national: online lessons, smart classes to reach 5,000 schools

Banka Unnayan, which has been teaching Class IX and Class X students through smart classes and Eckovation app, had started the innovative experiment from five schools and has now implemented in all 143 schools — on Monday, The Indian Express had reported.

The Banka experiment is already being replicated in Puducherry, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has asked the Education Department to explore ways to implement the Unnayan example in the state.

Eckovation co-founder Ritesh Singh said: “We signed an MoU with UBA on Monday and will have a grand launch on Wednesday to replicate Unnayan model in schools (classes IX through XII) of 5,000 villages across the country, get IIT professors to teach college students about rural development, and enhance students’ skills in rural technology.”

While Ritesh Singh represented Eckovation, the UBA was represented by its national coordinator, Prof V K Vijay, who heads the Centre for Rural Development and Technology in IIT-Delhi.

An IIT-D graduate himself, Singh said it was an honour to see Eckovation experiment replicated at such a big scale across the country. Stating that Eckovation was started with the vision of ensuring that quality education reaches all, Singh said, “With Unnayan, we are strongly progressing towards that goal. Limited number of quality teachers, high student-to-teacher ratio, low attendance, poor learning outcomes and huge dropouts, all these limitation of Indian education system can be solved by appropriate technological intervention.”

“Overwhelmed,” Banka district magistrate Kundan Kumar said: “That Unnayan is being replicated by over 5,000 villages of the country is gratifying (news). We always knew Unnayan would bring revolution in the education sector and bring school on mobile phone.”

Rakhi Kumari, SST teacher at Project Girls School Katoria, one of first five schools of Banka where the experiment began, said, “This is like a dream run…When we were able to draw girls to schools, which were 15-20 km away, we knew Unnayan has a magnet-like effect.”