Union Budget 2022: All about PM e-Vidya programme and why it was mentioned in Sitharaman's speech

In her budget for 2022-2023, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman laid special emphasis on education and how the COVID-19 pandemic had affected the education of millions of children.Speaking in Parliament, she said, “Many children have lost two years of formal education because of the COVID-19 pandemic. These children belonging to the SC and ST communities and other weaker sections. These are children in government schools.”Follow all Union Budget 2022 LIVE Updates hereShe said keeping that in mind, the government will expand the PM e-Vidya programme from 12 to 200 TV channels. Additionally, the government has taken various steps to boost online education during lockdown.Take a look at what is the PM e-Vidya programme and how it helps students.What’s the PM e-Vidya programme?The e-Vidya program begun in May 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.At the time, many schools and colleges had to shut down in an attempt to curb the spread of coronavirus, leaving many students without an education as online learning is not a feasible option for all. Keeping this in mind, the government launched their PM eVIDYA program.The uniqueness of the PM e-Vidya lies with its comprehensive accessibility for all as it caters the education content to all with its multi-mode set-up of remote learning platforms including internet, radio, community radio, podcast, and TV.One of the major initiatives of PM e-Vidya is 12 eVidya TV channels based on the line of One Class-One Channel for class 1 to 12 to air educational content related to the respective classes.These channels telecast curriculum based educational contents developed by NCERT and other agencies such as CBSE, KVS, NIOS, Rotary, etc. The video contents have been developed in both Hindi and English medium.Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget announcementFinance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the government will extend the PM e-Vidya programme of 'One Class, One TV programme' from 12 to 200 television channels.The move will enable all states to provide supplementary education in regional languages for classes 1 to 12, she added.In her budget speech she said, "High quality e-content in all spoken languages will be developed for delivery via internet mobile phones, TV and through radio and digital teachers."She also announced the setting up of a Digital University announcing to set up Digital University to provide students, across the country, with class quality universal education and personalised learning experience.Sitharaman announced that the university will be built on a network hub and spoke model with the collaboration of the best public universities.With inputs from agenciesRead all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.