Puri/Khurda Hunched over a keyboard, 14-year-old Aryan Tarai, in a race against time, is muttering under his breath. It is a Friday morning, and headphones muffled to his ears, he is perched on the edge of his seat inside the computer laboratory of the Puri Zilla school, the oldest and largest government school in the temple district. Around him, are 12 other students, peering into desktop computers, eyes dilated in an intense focus. Almost frantic, he punches the keyboard and clicks on the mouse furiously, attempting to drag the icon of a cat across the blue background on his screen. There are 20 minutes left for the period to end, and the task ahead of Tarai is to build a videogame called “Making your cat fly” using Scratch -- a free, block-based coding language that can create digital stories, games and animation.
“The period is going to end soon, and I have to finish this,” Tarai says, through gritted teeth. Next to him, Jnanapragyan Grahacharya, a year older and in a grade senior, peeps over to offer some advice. Hovering around them, is mathematics teacher Swagatika Pradhan. “For most students in classes 9 and 10, this computer class is the most sought after. They would all be very happy to just sit here and code away even if two periods are devoted to the subject,” Pradhan laughs.
In another classroom a few feet away, a second mathematics teacher Rojalin Priyadarshini looks on as a student solves a problem on a smartboard, powered by broadband, installed two years ago. He uses a digital pen, and draws up the 3D model of a cube. It wouldn’t do for the stern mask to slip in front of her students, but Priyadarshini is quietly pleased. “The smartboard had helped me to get the students to understand mathematical concepts visually. It has completely changed the way I teach,” says Priyadarshini.
Built in 1853, and with a current 1,650 students from classes from 1 to 10, the Puri Zilla school has a lasting legacy in Odisha’s education story. It is this pastel green-and-white coloured building in the bustling station bazaar locality from where social activist and first Odisha Congress president Gopabandhu Das, renowned teacher Acharya Harihar. and philosopher Pandit Nilakantha all emerged.
{{/usCountry}}Built in 1853, and with a current 1,650 students from classes from 1 to 10, the Puri Zilla school has a lasting legacy in Odisha’s education story. It is this pastel green-and-white coloured building in the bustling station bazaar locality from where social activist and first Odisha Congress president Gopabandhu Das, renowned teacher Acharya Harihar. and philosopher Pandit Nilakantha all emerged.
{{/usCountry}}But for most of these 170 years, these alumni were produced in spite of, and not because of, the standard of infrastructure in the school. Even two years ago, the school had no laboratories and no smartboards, the cemented floors were pock-marked, and the wooden furniture creaky.
Until 2021, when everything at the Puri Zilla school, and thousands of other high schools across the state began to undergo a change. Under a scheme called the 5T High School Programme (technology, teamwork, transparency, time and transformation) run by the school and mass education department, the Odisha government began an exercise to modernise 8,679 high schools(categorised as those that are up to Class 10) across the state. The Puri Zilla school, for instance, now has three laboratories including one for robotics and two classrooms with smartboards.
“I can see children more attentive and asking more questions after the 5T programme started in 2021. There is a visible change in the way the students are participating in academic and extracurricular activities,” Puri zilla school headmaster Jyotirmayee Mishra said.
The scheme, Odisha government officials admit, came in response to the identifiable need to adapt; to regenerate interest among students and bring class room teaching into the age of technology. On Monday, the Union education ministry told the Lok Sabha that Odisha had the highest drop-out rate of 49.9% among all states in India in 2021-22, much higher than the national average of 20.6%, a figure the state government contests.
But the transformation on the ground is visible.
VK Pandian, chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s trusted aide who recently quit the bureaucracy to join the BJD, and is chairman of 5T initiatives said, “With Covid impacting the education system for all of 2020 and most of 2021 in Odisha, chief minister Naveen Patnaik wanted to focus on improving the school education system. We started with transformation of high schools as that is where changes are most visible and the multiplier effect is high.”
RAPID STRIDESOdisha has a total of 67,961 government or government-aided schools in Odisha, 8,679 of which are high schools with 1.07 million students. Aswathy S, Odisha school and mass education secretary, said that the 5T scheme was aimed at changing the way classroom teaching is conducted, and taking it away from the traditional methods of chalk-and-board. “We wanted smart classrooms for classes 9 and 10 in each school, sitting arrangements in each school, a laboratory and interactive science centre, e-library, adequate drinking water provisions and sanitation facilities, electricity and games & sports facilities in the targeted schools,” said Aswathy.
But beyond questions of modernisation, there were basic challenges to overcome. When they started, for instance, 30%of high schools did not have regular electricity supply. “Now over, 90% have reliable power supply,” said Aswathy.
There was a clear shortage of teachers -- across the 8,679 schools, there are 36,610 teaching positions, but until 2021, there were only 25,271. Over the past two years, officials said, the state government has recruited 20,000 teachers, and is in the process of hiring 6025 more as “reserve teachers” so teaching can continue unhindered when some go on leave or quit.
Government data suggests that 6,800 had been upgraded by the end of March 2023, with the rest to be completed by March 2024. To be counted as an upgraded school, an institution must have a minimum of two classrooms with smartboards, laboratory-cum-interactive science centres, a well-equipped e-library, adequate drinking water provisions and sanitation facilities, and games and sport facilities. The classrooms need to be “adequately lit with good ventilation” with tiled floors and coloured walls, durable desks, and a bench of “steel/sturdy material.”
Senior government officials said that ₹1,268 crores has been allocated for the 5T programme in the 2023-24 budget, with help also sought from various alumni under the “Mo School Abhiyan” (My school programme), with any such contribution doubled by the state government. “Funding also came from the district mineral fund, Odisha Mineral Bearing Area Development Corporation and panchayat samitis,” a senior government official said.
At the Puri Zilla school, headmaster Jyotirmayee Mishra said that students now have access to separate physics and chemistry laboratories. “Previously, when our students went to higher secondary schools or colleges, they would often be intimidated because they had never even seen simple things like a Rheostat. The laboratories are now triggering an interest of students in scientific learning and research,” Mishra said.
Forty kilometres away, at the Kushabhadra government high school in Khurda district, girl students said that the smart classrooms have ignited an interest in science, a subject they once thought was beyond them. “I had difficulty in grasping scientific concepts. But now they are so much easier. I enjoy experiments because you don’t have to mug things up,” said 15-year-old Sofia Badar, a Class 10 student.
And it isn’t just science and mathematics. At the Puri school, 13-year- old Dhanalaxmi Rao won the bronze medal in uneven bars at the national gymnastics championships in February 2023, after the school included the infrastructure for the sport. In Kushabhadra school, students review works of Odia authors, often presenting them as long-form projects.
SOME CHALLENGES REMAINDespite the strides that have been made, teachers and educationists also caution that several challenges remain, with the education sector in Odisha behind more prosperous states for several decades. The shortage of teachers, for instance, is yet to be fully overcome. At the Puri school, of the 62 sanctioned posts, 24 were vacant. In November, the answer sheet of a student from the Jajpur district’s Prahaladchandra Brahmachari High School went viral on social media where they wrote, “We don’t have enough teachers, so kindly don’t expect too much from us.”
A senior official of the school and mass education department said getting adequate number of teachers has always been a problem due to lack of training, and that catching up is taking time. “To tide over the crisis, the government for the first time has taken steps for recruitment of 2064 teachers in the aided schools,” said a department official, highlighting that they were on the right that.
Educationist Anil Pradhan said that the efforts of the state government in transforming secondary education were laudatory, and that some areas need to be improved on. “Building smart classrooms is a good step,and the government needs to focus more on recruitment of teachers and their continuous training. The effort should be consistent and only then can we expect good results,” he said.
SHOULD GET A QUOTE FROM THE BJP/ CONGRESS ON THE 5T PROGRAMME
But back at the the Puri computer laboratory, there is a heady mix of determination and hope.
The bell has rung, and Tarai takes off his headphones, exhilarated but satisfied, beaming at the completed game on the computer screen before his eyes. He wants to do it all over again, but faster, quicker, better next time. “I want to be the best videogame creator in my school,” he says.