Vice President, M Venkaiah Naidu today stressed the importance of ensuring that there was no digital divide in the country even as he appreciated the measures being taken by the centre and state government to promote digital learning.

He called for increased access to the internet especially in rural areas and remote places and to keep inclusivity at the heart of the educational experience.

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‘‘The mantra should be — embrace, engage, enlighten and empower’’, he said.

Addressing a gathering after inaugurating the Sports Centre at the National Institute of Technical Teachers Training & Research (NITTTR) in Chennai, Naidu expressed concerns about the impact of the pandemic on education and said that school closures affected girls, children from disadvantaged backgrounds, those living in rural areas, children with disabilities and children from ethnic minorities more than their peers.

Naidu also called fort steps to upgrade the skills of teachers in e-learning. Emphasising the importance of quality teacher training in India, he said that ‘‘teachers constitute the intellectual lifeline of a nation and play a critical role in charting its development’’.

He stressed the need for teachers who were ‘‘learners and creators of knowledge — teachers who touch lives and seek to uplift the human condition’’.

‘We need inspirational, transformational leaders in our classrooms, especially in rural India’, he added.

Talking about India’s demographic dividend, he said that teachers have greater responsibility in moulding India’s huge youth population into responsible citizens. “Education does not mean just degrees,” he said and opined that the true purpose of education is enlightenment, empowerment and wisdom. The Vice President also called upon the institutes to focus on developing a constructive and positive attitude among the students.

The Vice President lauded the role of teachers as ‘COVID warriors’ and doing their best to ensure the academic continuity of their students during the pandemic. He noted that the teaching community explored technology and showed a ‘‘remarkable flexibility in reinventing their strategies and methodologies to support the learning of students.”