Question : Online Classes in Rural Areas During COVID-19

(a) whether the Government has taken stock of the online education facilities available to school children in the country when the schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic since March, 2020;
(b) if so, the details of percentage of children who were not able to attend the online classes during the closure of schools since March, 2020, State-wise;
(c) whether it has come to the notice of the government that according to recent reports, only 24.2 percent of the rural children in the country were able to access online education at the national level;
(d) if so, whether the government intends to provide assistance to States to strengthen the infrastructure facilities for online classes; and
(e) if so, the details thereof?

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

(SMT ANNPURNA DEVI)

(a) to (c) To facilitate the online learning by all students a comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA has been initiated as part of AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan on 17th May, 2020, which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multimode access to education. The initiative 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).
• One earmarked Swayam Prabha TV channel per class from 1 to 12 (one class, one channel).
• 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.
The innovative methods adopted by the States and UTs have been detailed in INDIA REPORT DIGITAL EDUCATION 2021. This report is available at
https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/irde_21.pdf
Education is a concurrent subject in the constitution and majority of schools come under the purview of the state and UT governments. The State/UT wise data regarding the ‘number of schools having internet facility by school category and management’ and ‘number of schools having computer available by school category and management’ is available at serial No. 37 (Id 3106) and 38 (Id 3109) respectively under the sub-heading Infrastructure of which the UDISE+ link has been provided herewith: https://dashboard.udiseplus.gov.in/#/reportDashboard/sReport
(d) & (e) The state/UTs governments have been advised to act based on the situation prevailing at every place to meet the demands of all students for providing them with the digital access required for learning digitally. Depending on the states’ requirement the Ministry of Education provides Rs.6.40 Lakh for setting up computer labs and Rs.2.40 Lakh for smart classroom.
The details of the sanction approved for ICT and Smart Classrooms for the year 2020-21 and 2021-22 has been mentioned in the table given below:

2020-21 (in Crores)	2021-22 (in Crores)
ICT	712.6	1003.8
Smart Classrooms	286.2	956.8


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