Only 13% of government schools (upper primary to higher secondary) inKarnataka, Home to the country’s IT capital, haveICTlabs, says the latest U-DISE (Unified District Information System for Education) data released by the ministry of school education and Literacy on Thursday. Worse, the Percentage of government schools with a functional ICT (Information & Communication Technology) lab is just 7%.
However, Karnataka’s education department said the figures are not updated. “The data could be reflecting only labs built using government funds. Almost all schools have labs through donors or other means.
Last year alone, 764 schools were given permission. Due to Covid-19, we could implement it only in 502 schools thus far. We have a target of completing it by 2025,” said an official of SamagraShikshana Karnataka.
As per U-DISE, there are 28,634 government schools with upper primary, secondary and higher secondary sections in the state. Of these, only 3,924 have ICT labs and they are functional only in 1,999 schools. While 18% aided schools have ICT labs, only 4% have functional ones.
Only 8% of government schools in Karnataka have functional mobile phones for TEACHING purposes, 5% have smart classrooms, 15% have projectors, 3% have PCs with functional Integrated Teaching Learning Devices, 3% have functional tablets, 11% government schools laptops and 9% have cyber security lessons for children.