20,000 classrooms in Kerala schools set to go hi-tech by January

A total of 20,000 classrooms in the state schools would go hi-tech by January next year as part of Kerala government's hi-tech school project.

Tender proceedings for the procurement of 60,250 laptops and 43,750 multimedia projectors to transform classrooms in 4,775 schools into hi-tech ones has been completed by the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE), formerly IT@School Project of the state general education department.

"With the issue of the Supply Orders for 60,250 laptops and 43,750 projectors, KITE has completed all the activities for converting 20,000 classrooms into hi-tech ones by the month of January 2018," Vice Chairman and Executive Director of KITE, K Anvar Sadath said in a release in Thiruvananthapuram.

The programme was to transform 45,000 classrooms in 4,775 schools in a phased manner. As many as 4775 government and government-aided schools, to be covered under this programme, including 2685 high schools, 1701 higher secondary schools and 389 vocational higher secondary schools.

Adhering to KITE Director Board decision, the purchase orders for the laptops and multimedia projectors was released to the successful bidders today, a press release said.

The competitive bidding in the national level tendering of laptops and projectors saw the active participation of top 4 major brands in laptops and 3 leading brands in projectors. 

Out of these bidders, the best price for Laptop was quoted by ACS Technologies for the Acer model Laptop and  Uneecops Technologies (BenQ model Projector) for the projectors, it said.

State public sector KELTRON, the L2 bidder in Projector has agreed to match the lowest price and hence as per the tender conditions, 40% of the orders for Projectors would be released to them.

The Technical Committee chaired by Prof Jayasankar, constituted by the government, had supervised the tender proceedings, the release said. 

In the Detailed Project Report of Hi-Tech school programme approved by Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board for a total estimated cost of Rs 493.50 crore, an amount of Rs 299.95 crore was set apart for laptops and projectors.