Himachal CM Sukhu inaugurates Vidhya Smiksha Kendra, says "will improve quality education through digital medium"
Nov 23, 2023
Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) [India], November 23 : Chief minister of Himachal Pradesh Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Thursday inaugurated the Vidhya Samiksha Kendra in Shimla, a data repository that will have data from all schemes run by the Ministry of Education (MoE).
Addressing the gathering after the inauguration, Sukhu said that to make the education system of the state technology and data-based, Samiksha Kendra (VSK), will help to through the SwiftChat platform which includes multiple AI chatbots.
"AI chatbots will enable teachers to provide personalized learning to students and administrators to make data-driven decisions," he said, adding that additionally, VSK will present dashboards and reports for the district, block, and individual school.
He further said that the VSK tracks student progress, teacher training, and school performance.
"It Will provide real-time data with information. Teachers and administrators change their teaching strategies based on this data and ensure that the teacher gives adequate attention to each student and focus so as to improve their education outcomes," he added.
The Chief Minister said that the Vidhya Samiksha Kendra of Himachal Pradesh is not just a data centre, it is a foundation for far-reaching changes in the education world ranging from Daily Attendance to periodic assessment, from digital home learning to remedial teaching, and from field monitoring to holistic Swiftchat is making tasks like creating report cards easier.
"The education department of Himachal Pradesh has incorporated the Ed-Tech company ConveGenius to establish Vidya Samiksha Kendra in the state," he added.
Earlier in July, the Centre directed the States and UTs to establish a Central system (Vidya Samiksha Kendra) at the state level for tracking student enrolment, progress in their learning levels, textbook delivery, support required by teachers and schools, etc.
Vidya Samiksha Kendra (VSK) is aimed at leveraging data and technology to bring a big leap in learning outcomes. This will cover data of more than 15 Lakh schools, 96 Lakh teachers and 26 Crore students and analyse them meaningfully using big data analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to enhance the overall monitoring of the education system and thereby improve learning outcomes.
The objectives of the VSK include monitoring the real-time status of various projects and activities under the ambit of Samagra Shiksha, keeping track of enrolled students including learning outcomes, Dropouts, support required by teachers and schools, etc, monitoring and tracking field-level academic and non-academic activities at the state level and also empower administrators and teachers in the field to take data-driven decisions.
To identify and analyse improvement areas for decision-making and implementation that need urgent attention, to improve the academic performance of students and to enhance the accountability of teachers in schools and effective utilisation of the available resources, to setup a centralized helpdesk for grievance redressal mechanism for stakeholders of school ecosystem, to develop centralized dashboard providing the real-time performance indicators of schools are also among its objectives.
Vidya Samiksha Kendra was approved under the Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) Project, for Himachal Pradesh along with Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan.