The education portal developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Madhya Pradesh, which has bagged several honours including the National E-Governance award, is being constantly enhanced with various facilities and services to enable multiple functions for efficient management of the education sector.

"Providing proactive, transparent and accountable governance to fulfil the goals of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), requirements of Right to Education (RTE) Act and spirit of RTI Act was a major challenge. Hence, we have developed a platform where multiple functions can be performed with just a click of a mouse," NIC Technical Director Sunil Jain told PTI.

"Since the project 'www.educationportal.mp.gov.in' was launched 17 months ago, it has recorded over 30 lakh hits and the number is growing everyday. This only proved its utility in governing department like education which has an involvement of large pool of human resources," Jain said.

The project covered over 1.15 lakh government schools located in more than 90,000 habitations, 3.47 lakh teachers/ support staff and 3,500 drawing and disbursing officers.

"Earlier government teachers never used to get their salaries on time, but after the implementation of education portal, salary bills are being prepared and submitted on line resulting in salary payments on time," he said. .

The portal will help a lot in implementing Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 which requires compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children between 6-14 years (nearly 1.60 crore children).

Besides covering number of schemes like providing free text books, school uniforms, free cycles and scholarships to students, the portal's targeted beneficiaries are nearly 1.12 crore students in government schools, more than 1.6 lakh out of school children, more than one lakh children with special needs, various offices of School Education and Tribal Welfare Department which runs schools in tribal areas and monitoring civil works with an estimated cost of above Rs one lakh.

The impact of the project was not only noticed in improving the state's education quality but also in results as they have surpassed all records of past 20 years, Jain said.

Besides, it allowed efficient and effective management of complex education sector, forewarns about problems, pinpoints them and facilitates timely interventions to address the issues like teachers not teaching, poor performing teachers and schools, zero teacher schools, schools with surplus staff, shortage of textbooks, uniforms and also identifies schools where posting of teachers required to ensure the recommended Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) among host of other facilities.

Since its inception, the portal has bagged five prestigious awards--Best e-Governance Project Award by PC Quest (Leading IT Magazine), Gold Icon National E-Governance Award of Government of India, Best Project under IT for Masses category of Government of Madhya Pradesh, CSI Nihilent E-Governance Award and the Manthan South Asia E-Governance Award.