February 4, 2022 1:29:36 am
Joint Municipal Commissioner, BMC, Ajit Kumbhar presented the education budget for financial year 2022-23 on Thursday (Representational) A YEAR after rebranding civic schools as Mumbai Public Schools (MPS), BMC’s education budget is focusing on initiatives expected to change the perception towards civic schools. With focus on its flagship project to bring non-state board schools under MPS, significant allocations are promoting digitalisation in civic schools, from day-to-day learning to administrative procedures.
Joint Municipal Commissioner, BMC, Ajit Kumbhar presented the education budget for financial year 2022-23 on Thursday. The total BMC education budget shows a 14.4 per cent increase, from Rs 2,945.78 crore last year to Rs 3,370.24 crore this year. A huge sum of Rs 419.20 crore has been made out for repairs, upgrade, and reconstruction of municipal school buildings. The number of students in civic schools has also increased from 2,63,000 last year to 2,92,000 this year. In the academic year 2022-23, offline training will be provided to teachers for implementation of National Education Policy with budgetary allocation of Rs 9 lakh. “We are working on collaborations with higher education institutions to bring the best training modules for our teachers. For example, bringing in management schools faculty to train school principals for effective management skills,” said Kumbhar.
A new budgetary allocation of Rs 15 crore is made to set up two schools offering curriculum of Cambridge University affiliated International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and International Baccalaureate (IB). BMC is already running 12 non-state-board schools; 11 affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and 1 affiliated to the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE). “A separate cell will be set up for academic and administrative work of all the non-state board schools combined,” said Kumbhar.
Another prominent aspect of this year’s budget gives importance to digitalisation, taking cue from the pandemic which forced dependence on virtual education. Among existing initiatives, Virtual Training Center is to continue using more modern technology. A sum of Rs 38.02 crore is allotted under a five-year plan to provide modern technology equipment to help four studios creating educational content in four different media.
In addition to this, Rs 27.01 crore is allotted in the new financial year for Digital Classroom project wherein 1,300 classrooms will be digitalised in 2022-23. This project, which began in the financial year 2018-19, has already completed digitalisation of 2,514 classrooms from a total of 7,934. Under this project, syllabus and curriculum of all subjects of state board will be made available in the form of audio-video content. Along with this set up, a web camera has been installed for face biometric attendance of the students. With projects such as School Management Information System (S-MIS) and preservation of documents in digital format, BMC plans to bring digitalisation in administrative work too.
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