Question : Audit of Digital Education in Rural Areas

(a) whether the Government has conducted an audit on the status of digitalisation of the rural education system;
(b) if so, the details of the audit conducted on disbursement of funds under relevant digital infrastructure schemes, by States, for the period March 2020 till date;
(c) if not, the reasons therefor; and
(d) whether the Government has conducted an audit on number of rural schools digitalised and are operational i.e. they are equipped with an internet connection, computers/hand-held devices, webcams and other instruments to aid online learning?

MINISTER OF EDUCATION

(SHRI DHARMENDRA PRADHAN)
(a) to (c) Education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and majority of the schools, colleges and universities are under the domain of respective State and UT Governments. The state 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. The Central Government is constantly advising States/UTs through guidelines and meeting with respect to interventions for reducing impact of pandemic on education across the nation.
Central government maintains UDISE data on certain parameters for all states/UTs, such as number of ICT labs, Internet connectivity, etc. As per UDISE data of 2019-20, a total of 65,356 ICT Labs and 29,178 digital classrooms are there in schools and a total of 1,19,581 schools across the country are there with internet facility.
(d) A total of 1.2 Lakh government schools across the are equipped with internet connection. Also, under the BharatNet programme, the CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd (CSC-SPV) of MeitY has been assigned the task of providing Fibre to the Home (FTTH) connectivity to the Government Institutions, including schools. About 63,100 Schools have been provided FTTH connections through BharatNet so far.
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