Along the lines of an initiative undertaken by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), a corporator has suggested that the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) also provide electronic tablets to corporation- run school students. Senior Shiv Sena corporator Prithviraj Sutar has submitted the proposal for the standing committee meeting scheduled for the coming Tuesday.
PMC runs a total of 309 schools — 225 Marathi-medium, 34 Urdu-medium, 2 Kannada-medium and 50 English-medium. As many as 1.04 lakh students study in these; the school board's annual budget is around Rs 350 crore per year.
Sutar told Mirror, "PMC spends almost Rs 40,000 per student in its schools — it can easily provide tablets to them to help reduce the school bag burden and provide quality education. Most students in these schools are from underprivileged backgrounds, and ofte n cannot invest in such facilities themselves. It is the administration's duty to provide them with an updated education."
He added, "We are already spending money on books and notebooks. Tablets will be a one-time investment and save the civic body money. BMC has already done it — Pune, known as the Oxford of the East, should implement it, too."
Interestingly, a state government order issued in July states that the prescribed weight for school bags for students from classes I to VIII should be limited to between 1,800 and 3,425 gms.
In August, BMC approved a proposal to distribute 22,799 tablets to Class VIII students across all its municipal schools, despite severe opposition from several parties that claimed it to be unnecessary, given that they would be more useful only with accompanying Wi-Fi facility or 3G services.
PMC administrative (education) officer, Baban Dahiphale, said, "There is no problem providing tablets to students, but we have to make a provision in the budget first. We have already tabled the next year's budget in the standing committee."
Source: Proposal to give tablets to PMC school students
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