Online power

New Delhi, Jan. 2: A student may soon be able to quiz, and learn from, teachers spread across the country without leaving his hometown.

The teaching will be done online, through a dedicated pan-India server connecting all higher education institutions under a new central programme cleared by the cabinet today.

Under the scheme, an engineering student from any college can, for instance, ask an Indian Institute of Technology professor questions through a formal mechanism. The professor is expected to reply on a blog created automatically for correspondence once the student asks a question.

Subsequently, all other questions posed by any student to this professor are directed to this blog, which can be publicly accessed. Students can also pose questions to a general database instead of a specific teacher.

The National Mission on Education through ICT (information and communication technology) is estimated to cost Rs 4,612 crore over the 11th five-year plan. The mission was suggested by the National Knowledge Commission and the Oversight Committee that prepared a framework for OBC reservations in higher education.

The programme will make quality education accessible to a greater number of students. The teachers, by becoming popular mentors to students across the country, will add to their “brand value”.

“It’s a win-win situation. Students have access to more mentors than ever before. And a good professor in a university located in the backwaters can, by answering tough questions, become popular across the country,” a senior human resource development ministry official said.

One offshoot of this is that the scheme aims to extend computerisation to the 18,000 colleges across the country, and to each department of India’s 419 universities and deemed universities. It will help train teachers in the use of ICT in college classrooms.

By 2012, the programme hopes to improve the gross enrolment ratio in India’s higher education system by 5 per cent.

The cabinet today also cleared the Rs 20,120-crore Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, India’s plan to universalise secondary education.

It’s the UPA government’s largest single new education scheme and is expected to figure prominently in the coalition’s Lok Sabha poll campaign.

The Centre will foot 75 per cent of the bill for the scheme’s implementation during the 11th five-year plan (till 2012), with the states paying the rest. The funding may shift to a 50:50 pattern in the 12th five-year plan.

The Abhiyan aims to improve the enrolment ratio in Classes IX and X to 75 per cent — from 52.26 per cent in 2005-06 (the latest statistics available) — within five years. This would require an estimated 32.20 lakh additional students to enrol by 2011-12.

Under the programme, the government is committed to strengthening the 44,000-odd existing secondary schools and opening 11,188 new ones. An additional 1.79 lakh teachers are to be appointed.