The State Cabinet on Friday (November 3) gave its nod for the appointment of ‘Future Skills’ experts by engineering colleges to mentor teachers and students of the 6,790 government high schools in use of digital infrastructure in the State.
The State government has identified engineering colleges as the implementing agencies of the ‘Future Skills’ concept and they will make available resource persons who will equip students with future skills.
“Each college will cover 20 high schools in its vicinity and one person per school will be designated as a Future Skills facilitator,” said Principal Secretary, School Education, Praveen Prakash.
Speaking to The Hindu, he said the resource person would be responsible for maintenance of the digital assets on the school premises, including the Interactive Flat Panels, tabs and smart TVs, use of digital devices and assets in schools by teachers and students, teach ‘future skills’ (digital technology-related subjects) as a subject teacher and train teachers in technology-led teaching.
The Principal Secretary said the minimum qualification of these facilitators should be M. Tech in Computer Science, M.Tech Electronics or MCA and equivalent.
The subjects covered by these facilitators will include Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), Blockchain technology, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), Metaverse/Web 3.0, 3D modelling and printing, cloud computing, cyber security, big data/ data analytics and robotics.
A committee of five members from the JNTUs, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) and independent experts would be constituted to develop the curriculum recruitment of Future Skills experts and their training would be completed by January, 2024 and they would be deployed in the schools by March in the next academic year, he said.
Mr. Praveen Prakash informed that uniform coaching would be imparted to students across the State and this would not disturb the academic training of students shifting from one school to the other.
The facilitators would be roped in on a contract basis initially for a period of one year and each of them would be paid a monthly sum of ₹22,000, equivalent to School Assistants. “The government will incur a cost of ₹159.5 crore per annum for implementation of this project,” he said.
