GUWAHATI: The tall claims of the ruling government over the digitization of the education system in the state fell flat as the ministry of education’s latest report said that Assam has the lowest 5.82% of total schools in the state with internet facilities.

The dismal status of the state’s schools and their infrastructure was highlighted in the report of the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), directly administered by the Union Ministry of Education, published on Thursday. This report was for the academic year 2019-20.

The report came at a time when the state government has been advocating on the online education system due to the prevailing Covid19 situation.

The report also said that only 12.7% of Assam schools have functional computer facilities. It also added that the state has one of the highest 32.3 % of dropout rates of students in the secondary level.

Assam has a total number of 65,907 schools. Out of them, at least 47,157 are government, 5,024 are government-aided, 6,074 are private unaided and 652 are others.

Out of the total government schools, only 11.44 per cent have computer facilities and 4.32 per cent of schools have an internet connection, the report said.

There are 1.5 million schools in our country, 98 lakh teachers and 26.5 crore students.

With the state’s educational institutes have been recorded with such poor infrastructure facilities, the condition of students coming from the financially weak background and living in remote areas was easily predictable.

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