Schools to get grants for sanitisation; students get devices: Centre

NEW DELHI: A meeting between the Centre and states on Monday resulted in a consensus to connect all the schools across India with the Bharat net to ensure uninterrupted education online. The states and Centre also agreed to provide digital devices to secondary school students.

Education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ today held a review meeting with state education secretaries on the COVID-19 situation in their states as well as online education, and developments around the National Education Policy (NEP). He will hold a meeting with university vice-chancellors on Tuesday, May 18.

The education minister stressed on preparing a COVID-19 action plan to ensure uninterrupted education. It was decided at the meeting that special grants will be provided to schools for sanitization and hygiene and teachers grants for awareness on safety and security in online mode and help them use online means of education.

As per a statement by the Ministry of Education: “To ensure the mental wellness of students and teachers, the 'Manodarpan' portal needs to be used effectively. Grief session to be arranged at required places.”

The two sides also agreed to set-up a help desk at the panchayat level to create awareness through use of mass media, which will also be used for conducting online learning and content dissemination.

The education minister also assured states that an ad-hoc grants of Rs 5,228 crore have already been released to the states under Samagra Shiksha and an amount of Rs 2,500 crore will be released soon to ensure continuity of various educational initiatives by the states and UTs.

Since the second wave of COVID-19 spread, most of the states announced to cancel their Class 10 exams and postponed Class 12 board exams. The academic activities were also shifted online.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) also cancelled class 10 board exams and postponed the class 12 exams.

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