In a bid to motivate students from government schools, the education department has decided to give laptops to meritorious students from the next session, officials said.
The education department has sent a proposal to the state government for sanctioning the budget for giving laptops to students. RK Kunwar, director of the education department said that a provision of Rs 1.5 crore has been made for this in the financial year 2019-20.
“It was decided that to motivate students to study better, all those students who would get more than 80% in their 10th and 12th board examinations, will be given laptops. We are waiting for the state government to approve the budget for buying the laptops which will be given from the next session,” he said.
This comes a month after the state government started the virtual classroom project, an online method of teaching, which was started under the Information and Communication Technology scheme of ‘Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan’.
The virtual classrooms use Satellite Interactive Technology (SIT) and Receive only Terminal (ROT) technologies for a two-way seamless inter-activity. These technologies are used for teaching different subjects by experts and teachers from the four central studios constructed in Dehradun.
During inaugurating of the project earlier this month, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had said that the technology will also be used to start programmes for spreading literacy among villagers, get motivational speakers for both young and old and screen films or other modes of entertainment for the community which is both informative and entertaining.
Before coming to power in the state in 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party in its vision document for Uttarakhand had promised a slew of freebies for the education sector, including distribution of free laptops and smartphones among meritorious students, besides giving a boost to health facilities and making them available to every section of the society.
The move was first started by the Congress government in the state in 2014, wherein the state government had decided that laptops will also be given to those students who secure more than 70% marks in higher, technological and medical education in Uttarakhand.
