Towards digital literacy through public-private partnership

Where Kerala spearheaded the Literacy program, Tamil Nadu too embarked on a similar mission - Digital Literacy, which was flagged off in 1999. The program was launched to impart computer education to all the school students within the State. Currently, the program has covered 80 percent of the Government Higher Secondary Schools in Tamil
Nadu.

Not only Tamil Nadu, but almost all the States within the country have introduced computer education in the schools now. But what makes Tamil Nadu unique? Murli Manohar Joshi, Union Minister for HRD, Science and Technology, had once
remarked "The Tamil Nadu experiment to be adopted and practiced everywhere. This worked very well in Tamil Nadu and we have asked other States also to emulate this". 

The model embraced by the State is an innovative public-private partnership, where the government will provide a classroom with 3-phase power connection and the private bodies or the contractor will participate by supplying the computers and an instructor. In addition to this, ELCOT (Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd), the promotional agency designated by the Government of Tamil Nadu for promoting IT industries in the state, will monitor the entire mechanism.

"The private-public venture has proved to be advantageous in the sense that the government need not worry about the machines and their maintenance. Moreover in IT, where things keep changing very fast and training the teachers becomes a snag to the entire operation. But in this model, whenever there is a change in the syllabus, the government has to just inform the contractor who will take care about the rest," said RT Arasan, GM (Marketing), ELCOT.For the smooth running of the program, ELCOT conducts quarterly inspection of all the schools covered under the project, to check whether the given syllabus is being covered and the maintenance of machines is being carried. Payment to the contractors is made once in a quarter based on the inspection report. Where ELCOT makes a study of the work done by the contractor, the Headmaster of the school also places a report on the contractor. The quality of the tutoring is decided by the percentage of the students who pass in the final exams. If the pass percentage is below 60 percent, the contractor is subjected to a penalty clause. "However, the pass percentage has been above 95 percent, which is gratifying," added
Arasan.

Besides ELCOT, professors from the Engineering Colleges also carry an inspection. In addition to this quarterly meetings are held where the contractors, Department of Education and the IT Secretary will sit together and address various issues and give the solutions. 

Nisha Kurian

(CNS)