Digital Leaders Spotlight: BanglarShiksha, West Bengal
Apr 19, 2023
A finalist in the 2023 WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize, BanglarShiksha Online 3.0 is an inteigrated digital platform School Education of West Bengal and a one stop place for all information related to entire school education ecosystem of the State. Serving students, teachers, and schools.
Highlights:
- Single platform to track students throughout their schooling, simplifying administration for teachers and parents, and enabling students to stay in school
Impact:
- 95,000 schools and 19 million students are covered by BanglarShiksha
- The drop-out rate declined from 3.3% to1.5% in West Bengal, while the national rate increased from 4% to 5.5%
- Students were able to access scholarships
- Students were able to more easily transfer between schools, and/or promoted/detained from one class to another, ensuring that they could stay in the right level of education
- Through the initiatives, students were able to access the SbujSathi scheme, giving students bicycles to help them get to school
Note: all statistics are from the submitter, and have not been independently verified by GovStack
SDG and WSIS Action Lines addressed:
| 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls 8: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all | AL C1. The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development AL C2. Information and communication infrastructure AL C3. Access to information and knowledge AL C4. Capacity building AL C5. Building confidence and security in use of ICTs AL C7. ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life — E-government AL C8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content AL C9. Media AL C10. Ethical dimensions of the Information Society AL C11. International and regional cooperation |
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Challenge:
To reduce the school dropout rate, Wes Bengal needed to address student needs, make it easier for teachers to track and support students, and help schools understand their student population better.
Solution:
A single platform to help track students and ensure that they are able successfully complete their schooling.
Key components of digital service
- Digital registries: At its heart, the BanglarShiksha is a centrally managed databased of all schools, students, and teachers under the State of West Bengal. These digital registries include digital registries of schools, digital registries of children of all age groups (0-18 years), digital registries of students, and digital registries of teachers.
- Digital identity: Every school, student and teacher in this digital repository is unique. Duplication of data is strictly restricted. Once captured, every data is identified with an unique ID which is carried forward in this ecosystem.
- Information mediator: The process is channelized through iOSMS Portal and iFMS Portal of the Govt. of West Bengal. External applications are also connected with this application ensuring interoperability and implementation of standards, which is essential for integrating various ICT Building Blocks and applications. Relevant APIs have been developed with other Portals. Data integration with other departmental portal (Kanyashree, Aikyashree Scholarship, SaboojSathi) have also become more helpful for implementation/monitoring of different schemes. BanglarShiksha 3.0 is a one stop solution to understand every activity in school. All the parallel portals that cater to student needs are now under the one umbrella of BanglarShiksha 3.0, the single source of students’ data. This gives a holistic picture to State officials.
- Security: Developed by the National Informatics Centre, BanglarShiksha uses principles like server security, network layer security, among tools to promote security
- Workflow: Students’ data are captured by the school concerned in the online system of BanglarShiksha3.0 by their own login credentials and those data may also be updated at any subsequent point of time, if required so. Student’s unique ID is generated and assigned to every student at the time of first admission which stays with him/her even after a student passes out of the school education system. No scope duplication of actual data at any school within the State makes the application to be error free. Some data are restricted for updating from the end of concerned higher level officials. Students or their parents / Employees can also verify their data. Students are promoted from one class to another class after completion of academic year and the system also facilitates transfer of students’ profile from one school to another.
- Analytics: Functionality has been fixed for every stakeholder within the system. All data are available to the respective officials only of the Department and to the higher authorities of the State including Hon’ble Chief Minister. Important KPIs are also there for useful policy making. Provision for downloading important reports is also available at the login of respective stakeholders. A State Data Analysis and Management Center (SDAMC) has been established to maintain the portal and solve if and when issues arise. SDAMC is also responsible to analyze the data and to get it error free by all concerned. This center also provides necessary inputs to Department for further innovation and enhancements in the portal. Besides these, all stakeholders have their own personalized dashboard with important KPIs and analytics for monitoring and decision making.
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