Shortage of Classrooms; 40 govt schools without E-labs

E-laboraties have not been set up due to shortage of classrooms in 40 government schools of the district. Howerver, there are 329 government high and senior secondary schools in the district.

Talking to Hindustan Times, district coordinator Edusat, Narinder Saggar, said, “Right now 289 government schools have the falcilty of e-labs and 40 schools are still running without these labs. We want to set up e-labs in every school but due to shortage of classrooms we are helpless. However, under Edusat classrooms 239 receive only terminals (ROTs) and 51 satellite interactive terminals (SITs) have been set up in government schools.”

Sanjeev Thapar, principal of Government Model Senior Secondary School, PAU, said, “We have 28 computers in the e-labs and pre-recorded lecture is available for Classes 1 to 10. Whenever the students have free periods they visit the e-labs and understand the chapters by reading it on the computers. However SIT and ROT are different and we have facilitated both.”

One of the government school headmistress at the condition of anonymity said, “Being a government high school we are not able to set up e-lab in the school as we are a strength of 650 students in the school. Already two classes are sitting in the open so we don't want to make more students sit in open. We have requested the district education office to provide us with more classrooms only then we will be able to get rooms for e-labs.”

Edusat has two terminals: (Time is fixed class-wise)

Receive only terminals (ROT)- one way communication where students can study through satellite. All the subject material is available on satellite.

Satellite Interactive Terminals (SIT)- two way communication where students can ask questions and answers are given back to students immediately.