The finance minister added that the pandemic led to a closure of schools and children from weaker sections and government schools lost almost two years of formal education
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Image courtesy CNBC-TV18
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2022 in the Lok Sabha today, 1 February. As part of the education sector initiative, she announced an expansion of the ‘One Class, One TV channel’ program under the PM eVIDYA scheme. The ‘One Class, One TV channel’ program will be expanded from current 12 channels to 200 channels.
The Finance Minister added that the pandemic led to a closure of schools and children from weaker sections and government schools lost almost two years of formal education. “We recognise the need to impart supplementary teaching and to build a resilient mechanism for education delivery” Sitharaman said.
The expansion has been done in order to enable states to offer supplementary education in regional languages for Classes 1 to 12. The budget also detailed that high quality e-content in all spoken languages will be developed for delivery via internet, mobile phones, televisions, radio and through digital teachers.
A competitive mechanism for development of quality e-content by the teachers will also be setup to empower and equip them with digital tools and facilitate better learning outcomes.
What is PM eVIDYA initiative
The initiative was launched in 2020 by the Central government as part of the Aatma Nirbhar Apna Bharat program to provide technology-driven education to students during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a shutdown of schools.
12 DTH channels were introduced as part of the ‘One Class, One TV channel initiative’. Community and radio podcasts for visually and hearing-impaired students were also included under this initiative.
Under the PM eVIDYA scheme, two portals, namely DIKSHA and NISHTHA were provided. Under the Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA) portal, students from classes 1 to 12 were provided with portals which could be accessed with QR codes and contained NCERT, CBSE and NIOS related online books.
The National Initiative for School Head’s and Teacher’s Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA) portal was for teachers in order to help them in training for digital delivery of classes so that the learning outcomes of students could be improved.
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