Under the scheme, the government has planned to set up 14,500 modern schools in various states by 2026-27. At present, 6,448 PM SHRI Schools have been identified and 90% of identified schools have mapped on PM GatiShakti portal, the first official among the two cited above said.  

The PM SHRI School is a centrally sponsored scheme initiated with the objective to ensure access to good physical infrastructure and appropriate resources for all students.  

The duration of the scheme is proposed to be from 2022-23 to 2026-27 and after that it would be the responsibility of the states/UTs to continue to maintain the benchmarks achieved by these schools, the second official said.  

More than 2 million students are expected to be the direct beneficiaries of the scheme. The total cost of the project is budgeted at ₹27,360 crore spread over a period of 5 years which includes central share of ₹18,128 crore. 

The national master plan is a core planning body under PM GatiShakti and it helps in creating data layers for the different ministries such as education, water resources, drinking water and sanitation, railways, etc. The ministries utilize the data layer available at the NMP portal for planning and execution of projects of national importance.   

Appreciating the notion of PM SHRI school scheme, noted educationalist J.S. Rajput suggested that the government must stop the system of hiring teachers on contracts within in a year if they want to improve primary education.   

The government must ensure availability of trained teachers apart from the infrastructure augmentation so that students in remote areas get better education facilities, said Rajput, who is a former director of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). 

“The NMP has mapped each and every detail required for planning infrastructure augmentation such as availability of drinking water in schools, electricity, number of teachers available against the total strength, number of toilets for girls and boys, internet, school building condition, road connectivity, existence of boundary wall, etc., in schools,” the first official said.  

Besides the school education department, the ministries with the mandate to construct roads, provide water, establish sanitation facilities will be able to use the data and plan their projects in accordance with the deficiencies of services in every school without making any physical survey, that involves time and cost, the first official added.   

The portal has also provided query-based gap analyser tool that can be used by each district in the country to assess first and last-mile connectivity of roads to schools in rural areas, besides connectivity to power line distribution, drinking water access, and sanitation infrastructure, fostering a holistic approach to education related infrastructure planning.   

Data layers pertaining to industries in districts can also be used to identify vocational courses that could be run in the high schools for students, equipping them with life skills, and tying up with apprenticeship with the industries.  

As per the government data, Uttar Pradesh has identified highest 928 number of schools under the PM SHRI scheme followed by Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (735), Andhra Pradesh (662) and Telangana (543). Besides PM SHRI Schools, the department of school education has mapped more than 1.4 million schools, including pre-primary, primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary, on PM GatiShakti NMP for real time monitoring of provision of facilities. 

PM SHRI Schools have also been mapped to identify other schools nearby, based on geospatial information, with the objective to anchor them, the second official said.  

Schools can be rationalized as well using PMGS, as has been accomplished by Goa that identified and consolidated 

underutilized schools with their nearest counterparts for improved resource allocation.   

PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP) was launched on 13 October 2021 for providing multimodal connectivity infrastructure to various economic zones. 

Queries sent on Wednesday to secretaries of the department for promotion of industry & internal trade (DPIIT) and school education, spokespersons of commerce and education ministries remained unanswered till press time.

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Published: 21 Dec 2023, 06:51 PM IST