HRD Minister releases guidelines for online education ‘Pragyata’

Union HRD Ministry on Tuesday released the guidelines for Digital Education. The ministry has recommended a cap on the screen time for students. As per the guidelines, online classes for pre-primary students should not be for more than 30 minutes. It further mentions that two online sessions of up to 30-45 minutes each should be conducted for classes 1 to 8 and four sessions for classes 9 to 12.

Earlier today, HRD Minister tweeted, “Introducing ‘PRAGYATA’: Guidelines on Digital Education for school heads, teachers, parents, and students containing recommended screen time for children, tips on coping with mental/physical stress during Digital Learning & more. Stay tuned for more details.”

The PRAGYATA guidelines include eight steps of online education that is, Plan, Review, Arrange, Guide, Yak(talk), Assign, Track, and Appreciate.

The guidelines outline suggestions for administrators, school heads, teachers, parents, and students in the following areas:

1. Need assessment
2. Concerns while planning online and digital education like duration, screen time, inclusiveness, balanced online and offline activities, etc level-wise
3. Modalities of intervention including resource curation, level-wise delivery, etc.
4. Physical, mental health, and wellbeing during digital education
5. Cyber safety and ethical practices including precautions and measures for maintaining cyber safety
6. Collaboration and convergence with various initiatives

“To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, schools will not only have to remodel and re-imagine the way teaching and learning have happened so far, but will also need to introduce a suitable method of delivering quality education through a healthy mix of schooling at home and schooling at school,” HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said.

“The guidelines have been developed from the perspective of learners, with a focus on online, blended, digital education for students who are presently at home due to the lockdown.These guidelines on digital education provide a roadmap or pointers for carrying forward online education to enhance the quality of education,” the minister added.