Panaji: In Goa, robotics and coding has already been made a part of the Class VI to VIII curriculum for 65,000 students studying in 435 government and aided schools. From 2022-23, the state plans to take the scheme a step further and offer an advanced curriculum to be taught after school hours to students with further interest and talent in robotics and coding.
More than 60 schools — four or more per taluka — have been identified through which the advanced curriculum will be taught to select 4,000-odd students for two additional hours per week.
This was revealed by Vijay Borges, project director of the special cell created at the directorate of technical education (DTE) for implementation of CM-CARES (Chief minister’s Coding and Robotics Education in Schools scheme).
“The National Education Policy 2020 speaks of skill development at the middle school level and implementation of robotics and coding curriculum is in line with these NEP recommendations. Other than the regular curriculum being taught in all government and aided middle and high schools, now we are implementing the second part of the scheme from the year 2022-23, where an advanced curriculum will be taught as an elective to students who are self-motivated to train further on topics like artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc,” Borges said.
The scheme is being implemented by the directorate of education and the curriculum has been designed based on broad guidelines provided by a panel of the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT).
For the year 2022-23, the advanced curriculum will be taught to a target of 8% students from those undergoing the regular robotics and coding curriculum. It has been left to the 540 computer teachers in schools teaching the regular programme for the current year to scout for talent to undergo the advanced curriculum, said Sonal Vaze, a computer teacher from Borges’ team.
“The 60-plus lead schools will offer their computer lab facilities whereas we will be inviting engineering graduates and professionals as ‘teach for Goa’ fellows to teach the advanced curriculum. The state is already in the process of acquiring equipment to upgrade school computer labs and when equipment is being distributed, these 60-odd lead schools will be given priority so that teaching of the advanced programme can begin as soon as possible,” Borges said.
Devendra Kuvelkar, lecturer at Government Polytechnic, said that the advanced classes will be held from 2.30pm to 4.30pm and 4.30pm to 6.30pm for two batches of 20 each per day.
“One student will undergo two hours of advanced training per week,” Kuvelkar said.
This advanced curriculum too is being taught completely free of cost, said Megha Nayak, assistant professor at Goa Engineering College, Farmagudi.
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