While inaugurating the Delhi Model Virtual School on Wednesday, 31 August, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed that it was the "country's first virtual school."
Kejriwal made the claim in a video released on his official social media handles, where he gave other details about the virtual school.
However, we found that the claim is not true. The National Institute of Open Schooling, an institution under the Union Government of India, had launched 'Virtual Open Schools' in August 2021.
Prior to that, the Uttarakhand government, under former Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, had launched a project in 2019 to connect 500 secondary schools to virtual classrooms to tackle the problems of staff shortage.
We also found instances of virtual classes being managed and run by private organisations from the year 2012 in the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) schools of Maharashtra.
VIRTUAL OPEN SCHOOL BY NIOS
Union Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, on 24 August 2021, had launched a 'Virtual Open School' of NIOS.
“This school is a new model of learning and is an example of how leveraging technology and innovation can facilitate greater inclusion in education," Pradhan said in a press release.
“The school is the first-of-its-kind initiative in India, which will provide advanced digital learning platforms via virtual live classrooms and labs, etc," the press release had added.
NIOS had uploaded the press note on its Twitter handle on 24 August 2021.
At a press conference, on the launch of the key initiatives of the National Education Policy 2020, Education Secretary, Anita Karwal, and Pradhan said that students in classes 9-12 had the option to join a virtual school to “attend live interactive classes, watch recorded sessions, submit tutor marked assignments (TMAs), assessments, and exams." This is similar to the classes that the Delhi Model Virtual School is offering.
In the press release, Pradhan has also said that the Alternate Academic Calendar of the NCERT has been developed to facilitate teachers and parents to assess the progress in the learning of children. The NIOS is also offering skill-based vocational courses to the learners of the NIOS Virtual Open School.
While the Delhi Virtual School is free, the NIOS' virtual open school charges Rs 250 per subject and an additional Rs 120 for practicals.
The NIOS' official Twitter handle had shared video reports of the virtual classes after they commenced in Jaipur, powered by BLEAP.
UTTARAKHAND GOVERNMENT LAUNCHED VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS BEFORE NIOS
Before the Virtual Open School, the Uttarakhand government had launched virtual classrooms to connect 500 government-run secondary schools in the state in November 2019.
"The project will help students to get coaching and the study material for preparation of their examination as well as further competitive entrance examination such as IIT and medical ones. I congratulate all the teachers, educationists, and officials who worked hard to make this a reality," the chief minister had said while inaugurating the project in a government school in Dehradun, the New Indian Express had reported.
We also found reports from 2019 about a virtual classroom launched by the Maharashtra State Council of Educational Research and Training and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan in collaboration with Valuable Group.
While this was a classroom, the model of a virtual school existed before the one launched by Kejriwal.
OTHER VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS BY PRIVATE COMPANIES
While looking for virtual classrooms across India, we found reports of a "virtual classroom" started as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activity by Sterlite Technologies Limited.
The project was piloted in December 2012 and is still going on. According to the 2019 report by Sterlite, 1,82,000 students in 480 Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai schools in the state of Maharashtra were supported by the Sterlite School Tech (SST).
NIOS ISSUES CLARIFICATION ON KEJRIWAL'S CLAIMS
The NIOS, on 31 August, clarified that Delhi's Virtual School was not the first in the country and that it had already launched the first virtual school in August 2021.
Speaking with news agency ANI on 1 September, the Chairperson for NIOS, Saroj Sharma, said that the first virtual school had started on 14 August 2021. Sharma told ANI that more than 25 lakh students had registered for the virtual schools across 7,000 study centres in India.
Evidently, the claim that the Delhi Model Virtual School was the first virtual school in the country is not true.
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