Misuse malady: Haryana govt to keep tabs on tabs

Alarmed over reports of Class 10 and 12 students misusing the e-tablets allotted to them, the Haryana government has decided to enlist the services of final-year tech students to examine the devices.

The state government, in 2022, had implemented its ambitious e-Adhigam scheme at a cost of ₹620 crore and distributed e-tablets to over five lakh students of Classes 10 and 12 in Haryana’s government schools. These tablets were pre-loaded with personalised and adaptive learning (PAL) software, learning content and high-speed internet connectivity by way of SIM cards. Around 30,000 teachers of 3,300 schools also received these devices.

The flagship programme, however, hit a snag as reports emerged about students breaching the security codes of the tablets and accessing objectionable websites.

This gave rise to a clamour for withdrawal of the tablets, at the forefront of which were village panchayats. The sarpanches urged the government to withdraw the tablets, saying that they had received complaints from parents that these tablets were hampering studies of students instead of helping them.

On being apprised of the matter, education minister Kanwar Pal had given directions to identify the students who had managed to bypass the security feature -- mobile device management (MDM), and use to it for purposes other than learning. The minister had also told officials to take action against such students and take back their tablets.

Sources reveal that the education department, however, found it impractical to seize tablets from students misusing it.

“Various options are being explored to make tablets foolproof. A blame game is going on among seven vendors over the firewall breach. The apparent solution is to limit internet access to the tablets,” said a senior official, adding that the government doesn’t have data on the number of students who have breached the MDM security walls.

Considering the seriousness of the matter, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar held a review meeting on August 4 in which in-principle decision was taken to involve final-year students of Haryana-based government technical colleges pursuing computer or electronic courses to inspect the tablets. The primary objective of this exercise is to ascertain the extent of misuse of the internet-enabled tablets.

“The education department has sent a proposal to the government under which we shall launch an exercise to check the tablets to ascertain breakage, if any, of the MDM,” said Anshaj Singh, director (secondary education) and special secretary (school education), adding that the suppliers of the tablets/software were not accepting that there was a breach in MDM.

“The key objective of this drive will be to know which application was used and for how long. Apart from this, connectivity issues, speed of the internet, white screen issue and MDM-access control related problems will be examined,” he added.

The tech students are required to visit their nearest schools on voluntary basis on Saturdays and inspect the devices. They will have to submit a report on their findings within three days of the inspection.

Around 2,500 students of 34 polytechnical colleges in the state will be roped in for the task and each of them will receive ₹500 honorarium for every visit after they upload the report.

“The volunteers will check tablets and data SIMs in all schools, track data entry on AVSAR portal at school-level, give feedback on the emergence of a grievance which otherwise is not available on the AVSAR portal and check and facilitate the school staff in updating the latest version of the PAL and check availability of network and its speed,” reads the proposal sent to the concerned authorities for approval.