Although the Odisha government is transforming its schools to provide better facilities to students, the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) report 2020-21 of the Ministry of Education released recently revealed that only 19.74 per cent of government-run schools in the state have a computer facility and only 2.84 per cent of these schools have internet facility, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
The survey was done when the schools were shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic and education was shifted online. There are 64,185 schools in the state of which 50,256 are run by the government. Of this, 12,673 have computers including 7,244 government schools. While 98 per cent of these schools have functional computers, only 1,428 government schools have internet facilities, as per TNIE.
There was a small change in the scenario compared to the 2019-20 academic session when 16.18 per cent government schools had computers and 2.7 per cent had internet facilities. Educationist Pritish Acharya said that in the current times, it needs to be examined why just 2 per cent of the schools have internet facilities. "Even as the report states that 19.7 per cent of public schools have computers, not all of these have teachers to train children in learning computers," he added, as per TNIE.
Schools to get computers with internet
Admitting that Odisha is lagging behind as far as facilitation of computers and internet in schools are concerned, School and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Dash said that the department has begun work in this direction in a phased manner. To begin with, all the 3,981 public schools that have been transformed under the 5T initiative will get working computers.
"Depending on the number of students in a school who are in the age group of learning computers, we are providing Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh to each district to develop computer labs with internet facilities," the Minister said, as per TNIE. He added that many of the district administrations have already called tender for the purpose and Puri has finalised its agency to implement the job at the cost of Rs 8 lakh.
