Only 25% Govt Schools in Tamil Nadu Have Internet Access, Gujarat and Kerala Tops List With 94%

Out of 37,636 government schools in Tamil Nadu, only 9292 schools have internet facilities, that is, only 25 per cent, MoS in the Ministry of Education Subash Sarkar has said. He was replying to a question raised by DMK Dharmapuri MP on the union government’s intent to provide internet connectivity to all schools in the country and funds allocated to Tamil Nadu in the last three years for this purpose.

MoS Subash Sarkar also listed the number of government schools run by every state and the number of these schools with internet facilities. Apart from Tamil Nadu, among southern states, Kerala runs 5010 government schools and 4738 schools have internet facilities, that is, 94 per cent. Following this, Andhra Pradesh runs 45,137 government schools out of which 20,313 schools have internet facilities, that is, 45 per cent, and Tamil Nadu ranks third with 25 per cent access. Karnataka and Telangana have 10.58 per cent and 9.23 per cent respectively.

While replying to DMK Dharmapuri MP’s question, Sarkar submitted the data before the floor of the house wherein he stated that “Education is in the Concurrent list of the Constitution and the majority of the schools are under the administrative control of respective state government and UT Administration. An advisory has been issued by the department of school education and literary, government of India to all the states and UTs to enter into an MoU / agreement with BSNL and provide FTTH internet connection to all the government schools which have computing devices.” Charges for these connections can be met from various Union Government schemes like “Samagra Shiksha”, he added.

Why the numbers from Tamil Nadu come as a surprise is it makes the highest allocation for education every year especially this year, over Rs 38,895 crore was allocated in 2022-23 and Rs 36,895 crore was allocated in 2021-22. With this being the situation and importance given to the development of school education, only 9292 schools have internet access. Since the last three years, internet access has become an integral part of available access to education. While comparing with other bigger states, in Uttar Pradesh the internet coverage in government schools is 8.81 per cent, while government schools in Gujarat have 94 per cent coverage.

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