AP CM Jagan launches distribution of tabs to class VIII students

Visakhapatnam: Celebrating his birthday in the tribal region with students, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy formally launched the distribution of tabs to Class VIII students at Chintapalli village in ASR district on Thursday.

Addressing a large public meeting of school children and their parents, the Chief Minister said that the children are our future, and the Government has been spending huge amounts on educational reforms to turn the students into global products.

The distribution of tabs, worth Rs 620 crore to 4,34,285 students, will take place for the next ten days across the State and MLAs, schoolteachers and Education Department officials will oversee the distribution in every mandal.

Reddy said that each tab is worth Rs 33,000 including the Byju’s content worth Rs 15,500 and reiterated that investment on education is productive investment on future human resources, adding that the study material-loaded tabs would guide the students as tutors and change their future for good.

The tabs would contain useful applications like AI (Artificial Intelligence)-aided doubt-clearance and learning foreign languages apps, he said, stating that they would work like teachers and help students improve their knowledge.

Dismissing reports that the students are going astray with the tabs, he said that parents would be able to track the way they are used by their children.

This is the second consecutive year that the tabs are being distributed to the students of class 8, and so far, the Government has distributed 9,52,925 tabs worth Rs 1306 crore.

The Chief Minister asserted that distribution of tabs is also one of the programmes taken up as part of reforms being implemented in the educational sector aiming at improving the standards of students and making them globally acceptable products with knowledge of emerging technologies.

Digitalisation of 62097 class rooms from class 6 and above would be completed by the end of January next year and it would help students become the best in the world, he said, observing that the facade of education and job market would totally change in the next 20 years.

In tune with the changing world, Government will introduce future skills like training for students of classes 8 and above from next academic year so that they would learn advanced subjects like Cyber security, virtual reality, AI, machine learning, augmented reality and data and robotic analytics along with IB (International Baccalaureate) syllabus and efforts are on to appoint tutors and train them, Reddy added.