Department of school education (DSE), government of West Bengal is looking at significant increase in the number of schools under its computer literacy training programme (CLTP) within the next twelve months.

Debaditya Chakrabarti, principal secretary, DSE said, "Currently, CLTP has started in over 500 schools. More than 1,300 schools in West Bengal have some or the other kind of computer training programme. We are trying to take this figure upto 2,500 schools in the current year and to all the schools in the state within the next three years."

Of the 500 schools which have CLTP, 100 run it in association with NIIT and Webel currently, while the rest have IBM as their partner. DSE has targeted 400 students in each school, according to Chakrabarti.

"Forty per cent of these students will not be able to pay for it. But financial constraints should not stop these students from pursuing the course," he added.

Last year, 35,000 students in 17 districts did the CLTP course in the 100 schools which have tie-ups with NIIT. This is a significant jump from the 29,500 who did the course in 2001-02.

Pleading for a bigger vocational element in the school syllabi, Chakrabarti said that 80-85 per cent of the course in China had elements of vocational training, while the figure in India was 3-5 per cent.

Moreover only 10 per cent of the students in India who enter schools go for higher education, while in China the figure was 87 per cent.

( www.business-standard.com)