We need to expand and improve quality of our education system, says BD Kalla

The Union Budget could not bring smiles to people’s faces. Will the state budget do that? Health and education are considered important.

Shweta Mishra Awasthi talks to Education Minister BD Kalla to know what is needed to strengthen the education system of the state and what we should expect from the CM in his budget.

Education is an important sector. What new is being done to strengthen it?

The Union budget does not have anything new for this sector. We expected that the government would provide a special package for the transformed education system where both online and offline classes are conducted because of the new challenges due to the pandemic.

But this did not happen. However, at the state level, we would like to expand our education system. We don’t know what CM Ashok Gehlot, who is also the Finance Minister, has in store for us.

We hope that the CM would make special provision for situations when schools have to conduct online classes.

He should provide us with financial resources so that online classes are conducted smoothly from Classes 1 to 10.

Covid has affected education in both schools and colleges. Do you think online education has become mandatory and something new should be introduced to make it better?

Yes, it is necessary to introduce new educational content considering the transformed education system. I have requested the CM to keep this in mind while making the budget.

The budget is paperless. Everything is being digitised now. Do you think the education system will also become digital?

Certainly, if everything becomes online, it would eventually become paperless. In the new calendar in schools, Saturdays have been marked as ‘bagless’ days when our focus would be to engage them in extracurricular activities on this day.

Although education continued through online classes, there have been discrepancies. What are we doing to fix them?

Teachers are teaching in the same way as they taught during offline classes but the grey area in online classes is that if a student gets distracted, the teacher cannot immediately notice it.

During offline classes, there is one-to-one contact between the teacher and the student.

What is being done for the expansion of English medium schools?

The CM has announced to open 1,200 Mahatma Gandhi English medium schools of which 562 schools have been opened.

81,000 students have already registered here. We hope to strengthen this in the next two years and we also plan to introduce English at the pre-primary level.

Do we plan to conduct PTM in Rajasthan too on the lines of government schools in Delhi?

I recently held a meeting with the School Management and Development Committee across the state and instructed them that monthly PTMs must be conducted through webinars.

How do you plan to deal with school dropouts at primary and secondary levels?

We are planning to start a scholarship with the help of the Centre in which 65,000 students got the registration done and 32,500 participated.

We provide a monthly scholarship of Rs 1,000 to the winners. We try to bring back the dropouts. and I believe that in Rajasthan the percentage of school dropouts has gone down and literacy is increasing.

Last year, the education budget was Rs 36,000 crore. Do you think the fund should be increased this time?

Yes, I wish that our budget is more this time. We have made efforts for this and hope that the education department gets funds as expected.