Delhi government is planning to bring Closed Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) not just for the purpose of security but to keep a tab on what is going on inside classrooms, said Punya Salila Shrivastava, Secretary, Education said at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi today.
Speaking on the Conference on Quality Education for All “Role of Affordable & Accessible Technology” organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Ms. Punya Salila Shrivastava, Secretary, Education, elaborated upon the key initiatives taken by the Delhi Government this year. She further said, last year our budget witnessed a hike of about 106% over the previous year budget nearly Rs.10,000 crore in the state government to focus on education.
Ms. Punya said, Delhi government has identified the three aspects. Providing adequate facilities and good infrastructure are the prime focus. We have about 1,011 government schools with nearly 15 lakhs children as of today. In our government schools, we have 100-150 children sitting in a classroom.
Some crowded area of East and north East part of Delhi. Schools are running in three shifts means three batches into the same school and sometime they come to school on alternative basis. So, there are areas where density of population is very high. So, the focus was we have to improve our infrastructure, said Ms. Punya.
Second area in which we are working is the capable and dynamic teachers in our school. So, we want to ensure the adequate quality of our teachers and third aspects is improving our curriculum and teaching practice.
By using technology in this regard, as far infrastructure and adequate facilities are concern, we have gone on massive construction of simple classrooms not smart as yet. So, 8,000 classrooms are being constructed across the Delhi, added Ms. Punya.
Some schools we are developing in a pilot manner. In all our schools last year, we set up computers in all our schools with the content and instructors also supplied by the companies.
I request all the companies that whenever you develop the content, should keep in mind that you are generating for first generation learner. So, we have set up computer labs across all our schools.
We realise the infrastructure of the government school is very bad. It needs a lot of coordination by the principal with whole host of agency. Curriculum improvement is also first thing the government has also started working on.
In Delhi, we have done a survey of each and every child studying 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th standards. To know there learning skills, we found 74% of children in 6th can’t read their own text book and nearly 40 can’t read the text book of class 2, mentioned Ms. Punya.
We are doing also doing lot of planning because we really want them to read it fast otherwise they will miss out entire year. Again, Technology plays a very vital role here in both ways in tracking the progress of every child and make up the child read even faster.