Education Minister interacts with Journalists on Edusat

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Education Minister interacts with Journalists on Edusat

March 28, 2007

Sirsa (SIRSA NEWS)

SIRSA JOURNALISTS today interacted and posed questions to Mr. Phool Chand Mullana education minister Haryana in an SIT node of Edusat at Government Senior Secondary Model School, Anaj Mandi Sirsa. By the time turn of Sirsa came up on the Edusat session Mr. RS Gujaral, financial commissioner education department was answering questions on behalf of the minister.

At the interactive session Mr Satish Mehra, DPRO, Mrs. Sheela Bhakar DEO, Mr. Mittarsain Malhotra, ADEO. Mr. Harbhajan Singh Dhanju Principal, Mr. Hamender Singh Distt. Nodal Officer, Edusat, local print and electronic media journalists were present.

To a question raised by Mr. Amar Singh of DD News about large number of drop outs form schools, Mr. Gujral said that it was a national phenomenon and governments are working to improve the situation. He said that the newly introduced semester exam system shall improve the situation.

Mr Gujral also admitted that at many places due to shortage of power supply edusat systems od education may get affected some time but elaborate arrangements for power back up (UPS) have been provided every where that can run the Edusat sat for more than 4 hours.

SIRSA NEWS had posed to Mr. Gujral that why an interim, cost effective and technically stable step of providing Multimedia Computers and Multimedia Educational CD-ROMS had been comfortably skipped, and a giant leap from black board to Satelite technology education has been taken? (Knowing well that the technology is still fragile to handle at all places, today’s erratic functioning of Edusat was a tell tale story!) Before answering this query Mr. Gujral switched to another district.

Answering question about increasing number of molestation of girl students, Mr. Gujaral assured that government is very serious about such happenings and sternest action shall be taken in any such cases. There is plan to appoint teachers of age 50 and above in Girls Schools.

[On Sirsa News, Click to Read also: Teacher Booked for Molesting 12 year old Girl at Govt School Kirpal Patti ]


Addressing the first-ever tele-conference on the network from the DIET Building, Sector 2, Minister of Education Haryana Mr. Phool Chand Mullana said the biggest ever initiative in the country would help in providing quality teaching to students in every corner of the state. Primary classes would be given lessons in English and mathematics.

Announcing that students of senior secondary schools and final year of
colleges had begun benefiting from the programme, he stated that the AIEEE classes for science students of Class XII had elicited tremendous response. "Our motto is to provide uniform and quality education across the board and EDUSAT is our key to this," he said.

Mullana announced that a subsidy of Rs 1 lakh would be provided to government aided recognised colleges if they want to connect with the EDUSAT system while private schools would only require to install a direct-to-home dish and could get transmission. "We are not going to charge any fee for that," he remarked. In response to a question, the minister said the curriculum material in both Hindi and English for primary classes and arts stream senior secondary school students was being prepared. The department will confine the transmission to four days while leaving one day for practicals and Saturdays for the teacher to recapitulate the entire week's lesson for the students.

Meanwhile, in the interaction with district correspondents across the state, a reporter from Gurgaon asked the minister to explain how students would benefit from the programme if the connectivity problem continues.

Haryana education minister Phool Chand Mullana today had first hand experience of the hiccups in the smooth implementation of Haryana's ambitious EDUSAT programme. In a session plagued with problems of connectivity, unclear transmission and poor sound quality, the minister announced that all government primary and senior secondary schools would be connected through the EDUSAT network by the end of May this year.