All schools to have Wi-Fi from next academic year

Kottayam: The government plans to provide Wi-Fi services in all government schools starting from the next academic year.

The plan is to convert all campuses in the schools as Wi-Fi campuses. The government is planning to introduce the Wi-Fi facility in at least four schools in all districts this year as part of the IT@School initiative and then expand the program to all schools later.

In addition, higher secondary schools would have e-learning, e-governance and e-services as part of their curriculum. When students complete their plus two courses, they would be provided with a DCA (Diploma in Computer Applications) certificate.

Even though the government had made DCA a requirement for clerical positions and then dropped the decision, it is expected that in future, knowledge in computer applications would be made mandatory for clerical positions.

All schools would be linked through Virtual Private Networking and computer hardware would be taught in classes eighth and ninth along with operating systems in class tenth.

In plus one classes, subjects such IT, multimedia and web-enabled courses would be taught along with soft skills. Students would also acquire practical knowledge in productivity suites, video editing etc. Such skills also would be also used in continuous evaluation schemes.

In plus two, courses would focus on helping students apply for jobs online. Various aspects of e-governance, e-learning, e-commerce etc would be taught. Students would also be encouraged to enroll in social media sites and contribute productively to the society. Further, students would also be taught to publish books and other creative productions.

With the implementation of such courses, the government hopes that the students from public schools would be more qualified in IT than students from ICSE and CBSE schools.