Digital India initiative of Government has revolutionized education access in rural areas
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India launched the ‘Digital India’ programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge-based economy by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment and bridging the digital divide.
To achieve these objectives, particularly in rural, tribal and remote areas, Ministry of Education offers high quality educational programmes through DTH channels as well as web platforms under the aegis of PM e-Vidya.
Some of the major education initiatives are as follows:
- · DIKSHA the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in States/UTs and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades (one nation, one digital platform). Till date (25.07.2023) DIKSHA has clocked more than 524 crores learning sessions, more than 6,125 crore learning minutes with more than 2.2 crore average daily page hits. A total of 3,17,496 pieces of e-contents are live on DIKSHA as on date.
- · 12 DTH Channels in school education and 22 SWAYAM PRABHA channels in higher education are already functional. As per budget announcement for Financial Year 2022-23, the 12 DTH Channels would be expanded to 200 (Two hundred) PM e-Vidya DTH TV Channels.
- · SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) is the national MOOC platform with provision of credit transfer to Universities, for Higher Education Courses. NIOS and NCERT are National Coordinator for school sector courses under SWAYAM, delivering school courses from 9th to 12th. On SWAYAM Portal a total of 10,451 Courses are available out of these courses, 257 courses of NCERT and 431 courses of NIOS are available. For NCERT courses 4.1 lakh students are registered and for NIOS courses more than 34 lakh students are registered.
To realize the vision of Digital India, all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education are organized under PM e-Vidya banner as part of Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan.
The information was given by the Minister of State for Education, Annpurna Devi in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.