50 Lakh students in Jharkhand to get PDFs of books on Diksha portal

He said the department has procured the new textbooks but could not provide it to the students through schools due to the lockdown. It will be distributed soon after classes begin, he said.

Failing to provide textbooks to the students due to the lockdown, the sate education department was contemplating to upload PDF files of the textbooks on its Diksha, a Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC) portal, for 50 lakh students studying in primary and high schools.

Secretary of school education and literacy, AP Singh, said there was hardly any change in the syllabus and the department had discussed to provide QR codes of the old textbooks so that the students, studying in government schools and taking online classes during lockdown, could access their textbooks and get benefited.

He said the department has procured the new textbooks but could not provide it to the students through schools due to the lockdown. It will be distributed soon after classes begin, he said.

However, the chances of early opening of schools appear remote and the department was planning to upload the QR codes so that the students could access the PDF files.

Meanwhile, JEPC director, Uma Shankar Singh, on Saturday directed all block resource persons (BRPs) and cluster resource persons (CRPs) to ensure that the course module reaches online to the students.

Issuing a video clip, he told the resource persons to ensure that all headmasters and headmistresses get the contents in advance so that they could reach out to the students online on time.

He appealed to all school authorities to create WhatsApp groups and add students on Diksha portal.

The performance of the teachers would be evaluated on the success of online classes, he added.

The director also appealed to the BRPs and CRPs to get feedbacks from the headmasters and headmistresses at regular intervals on shortcomings of online course modules for rectification.