PM Gatishakti To Speed Up PM SHRI Schools Infrastructure Augmentation

(MENAFN- Live Mint) "The government is planning to augment the infrastructure of PM SHRI schools with the help of PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP). The plan is to speed up the scheme as a national master plan and has mapped the details of about 90% of the identified infrastructure for remodelling it at par with global standards, two officials in the know said.
Under the scheme, the government has planned to set up 14,500 modern schools in various states by 2026-27. At present, 6,448 PM SHRI Schools have been identified
and 90% of identified
schools have mapped
on PM GatiShakti
portal, the first official among the two cited above said.
The PM SHRI School is a centrally sponsored scheme initiated
with the objective
to ensure
access to good physical infrastructure and appropriate resources
for all students.
The duration of the scheme is proposed to be from 2022-23 to 2026-27 and after that it would be the responsibility of the states/UTs to continue to maintain the benchmarks achieved by these schools, the second official said.
More than 2 million students are expected to be the direct beneficiaries of the scheme. The total cost of the project is budgeted at ₹27,360 crore spread over a period of 5 years which includes central share of ₹18,128 crore.
The national master plan is a core planning body under PM GatiShakti
and it helps in creating data layers for the different ministries such as education, water resources, drinking water and sanitation, railways, etc. The ministries utilize
the data layer available at the NMP portal for planning and execution of projects of national importance.
Appreciating the notion of PM SHRI school scheme, noted educationalist J.S. Rajput suggested that the government must stop the system of hiring teachers on contracts within in a year if they want to improve primary education.
The government must ensure availability of trained teachers apart from the infrastructure augmentation so that students in remote areas get better education facilities, said Rajput, who is a former director of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
“The NMP has mapped each and every detail required for planning infrastructure augmentation such as availability of drinking water in schools, electricity, number of teachers available against the total strength, number of toilets for girls and boys, internet, school building condition, road connectivity, existence of boundary wall, etc.,
in schools,” the first official said.
Besides the school education department, the ministries with the mandate to construct roads, provide
water, establish
sanitation facilities will be able to use the data and plan their projects in accordance with the deficiencies of services in every school without making any physical survey, that involves time and cost, the first official added.
The portal has also provided
query-based gap analyser
tool that can be used by each district in the country to assess first and last-mile connectivity of roads to schools in rural areas, besides connectivity to power line distribution, drinking water access, and sanitation infrastructure, fostering a holistic approach
to education related infrastructure planning.
Data layers pertaining to
industries in districts can also be used to identify
vocational courses that could be run in the high schools for students, equipping them with life skills, and tying up with apprenticeship with the industries.
As per the government data, Uttar Pradesh has identified
highest 928
number of schools under the PM SHRI scheme followed by Kendriya
Vidyalaya Sangathan (735), Andhra Pradesh (662) and Telangana (543). Besides PM SHRI Schools, the department of school education has mapped more than 1.4 million schools, including pre-primary, primary, upper primary, secondary
and higher secondary, on PM GatiShakti NMP for real time monitoring of provision of facilities.
PM SHRI Schools have also been mapped to identify
other schools nearby, based on geospatial information, with the objective
to anchor them, the second official said.
Schools can be rationalized
as well using PMGS, as has been accomplished
by Goa that identified
and consolidated
underutilized schools with their nearest counterparts for improved resource allocation.
PM GatiShakti
National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP) was launched on 13 October 2021 for providing
multimodal connectivity infrastructure to various economic zones.
Queries sent on Wednesday to secretaries of the department
for promotion of industry & internal trade (DPIIT) and school education, spokespersons of commerce and education
ministries
remained unanswered till press time.

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