Education Budget 2022 – Major Emphasis on Digitalization of Education

New Delhi, 01 February 2022: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has released the Union Budget 2022 today, that is 01 February 2022. This year’s budget focuses on revolutionizing  the education sector through the launch of Digital University, expansion of ‘One class, One TV channel’ for supplementary education, development of high quality e-content, among other things.

Education Budget 2022: Launch of Digital University

A digital university will be established with the aim of providing access to students across the country for world-class universal education with personalised learning experience. Other important features are as follows: 

1. The digital university is set to have programmes in different Indian languages and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) formats. 
2. The university will work with other central universities in the country to provide the required digital infrastructure and training. 
3. The university will be built on a network hub and spoke model. In the hub and spoke model, the hub is a virtual network that acts as a central location for managing external connectivity and hosting services used by multiple workloads. The spokes are virtual networks that host workloads and connect to the central hub through virtual network peering.

Note:

1.  India already has one digital university,”Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology”. It is India’s first digital university and was inaugurated at Mangalapuram near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. It was established by upgrading the two-decade-old Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala (IIITM-K). 
2. Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology strives to be an international benchmark in conducting cutting edge research and nurturing budding minds in the center for promoting and implementing modern technological interventions in disruptive technologies.
3. The University aims to create capacity building in post-graduate and doctoral levels in the areas of Artificial Intelligence & Natural Language Processing, Internet of Things, Electronic Systems & Automation, Imaging Technologies, Data Analytics & Big Data, Cyber Security, Blockchain, Ecological Informatics, Geospatial Analytics, etc.

Also Read: Education Budget 2022 – Key Highlights, Emphasis on Digital Education

Education Budget 2022: One Nation Digital Platform

• With regard to school education, the Union Minister acknowledged the serious impact of the pandemic on crores of children who have lost almost two years of formal schooling. 
• For this, the government is all set to launch ‘One Class, One TV Channel’ – a program of PM e-VIDYA, which will be called ‘One Nation Digital Platform’.
• This channel will be implemented to provide supplementary education to children to make up for the loss of formal education due to COVID-19.
• As of now, the various TV channels running to bring quality educational programmes to every household are as follows:
  • e-Vidya for classes 1 to 12 (12 channels) of National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT).
  • Vande Gujarat (Govt. of Gujarat) (16 channels).
  • DigiShala under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) (1 channel).
• The  ‘One Class, One TV Channel’ scheme will be expanded from the existing 12 educational television channels to 200 channels. This would allow all states to provide extensive content in regional languages. 

Note: 

Under PM e-VIDYA scheme, the following facilities will be available:

• The top hundred universities of the country will educate students through online education.
• For all those students who do not have access to the internet, Swayam Prabha DTH channel has been launched to provide education.
• A Diksha platform has been launched, which will involve e-content and QR code energized books for all the classes. DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) is a national platform for school education. It is an initiative of the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT), Ministry of Education. DIKSHA was developed based on the core principles of open architecture, open access, open licensing diversity, choice, and autonomy.
• For visually and hearing impaired students, the government will also introduce radio podcasts. 

Education Budget 2022: Focus on High Quality E-Content

• High-quality e-content will be developed for delivery through internet, mobile phones, television and radio channels through digital teachers in all spoken languages. 
• A competitive mechanism for development of quality e-content by the teachers will be launched with the aim of empowering and equipping them with digital tools of teaching to facilitate better learning outcomes.
• Regarding vocational courses, 750 virtual laboratories in science and mathematics and 75 skilling e-laboratories will be set-up to promote critical as well as creative thinking skills.