Sircilla: With the aim of bridging the gap between school education and higher education, IIT Madras, through the Centre for Outreach and Digital Education (CODE), has launched the School Connect Programme in which Sircilla Government High School and ZPHS Girls High Schools have been selected from the district.

As part of this, IIT Madras will work in collaboration with Scaler School of Technology to provide online courses to students of Sircilla Government High School for Boys and Girls. A total of 10 courses, such as Data Science and AI, Aerospace, Architecture and Design, Engineering Logical Systems, Maths Assumption, Games and Puzzles, Environment, Fun with Maths and Computing, Law, Electronic Systems, Humanities will be provided for a duration of eight weeks. IIT Madras will be charging a nominal fee from the students for this.

Speaking to The Hans India, Sircilla Government School HM Chakinala Srinivas expressed happiness that IIT Madras was a partner of the school for the programme. “Students will get the opportunity to learn skills directly from professors in cutting-edge fields like data science and artificial intelligence. Introducing technology and social sciences to students at the school level will lay the foundation for them to become innovators in the future,” he said.

Meanwhile, Zilla Parishad Girls High School Geeta Nagar Headmaster Lokini Sharadha said, “It is a great pleasure that school students have been selected for the foundation course. It is a good opportunity for the students to attend online classes regularly and write in the exams they conduct and improve their skills.”

“In the coming days, students studying in government schools will also be able to appear for competitive exams without fear and will have a chance to get seats in educational institutions like IITs in the coming days,” she said. The courses are set to start from August for Class 10 students and will be held for two months. Certificates related to the course will be provided to the students. The videos recorded as part of these courses will be made available on the portal every Monday during the class time. There will be an opportunity to talk to IIT professors live every Saturday and can get their doubts cleared.