Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday emphasised the need for ‘technology schools’ at the high school level to spread out its prowess in the sector to other parts of the state.

The initiative is part of “Beyond Bengaluru ‘’ where the state government will look to create a talent pool in other cities of the state, enabling them to attract investments away from its capital, leading to equitable growth of Karnataka.

“There was a technology school in Hubli way back in 1960 which was closed later. But, technology schools need to be started considering the fact that perception ability will be more during childhood”, Bommai said on Tuesday.

The chief minister added that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee’ tinkering labs should be upgraded and artificial intelligence must be included at that level at least to some extent. He also said that Polytechnics institutes need to be upgraded as well.

A significant number of the world’s biggest corporations have a presence in Bengaluru and the administration has been trying to get some of these investors to consider expanding operations to other parts of the state to stem mass migrations into a city that already is home to almost a quarter of the state’s 70 million population.

Dr.C.N.Ashwath Narayan, the minister for IT/BT and S&T said, a center of excellence (CoE) for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Date Engineering will be set up soon in Hubballi.

Karnataka is trying to be the first in the country to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) which, the minister said, aspires to ready the students as per the global technological developments and coding will be taught for students at the school level itself..

“The government has brought in effective policies to promote innovative technologies and the duration of the internship has risen from 3 weeks to 30 weeks. Students will also be given the opportunity to undergo internship in foreign countries,” Narayan said.

The gap in learning–and teaching–is getting wider as government schools in the state, especially in rural areas, have not been able to compete with private educational institutions, adding to the problem of unemployment in states like Karnataka and other regions of the country.

The Karnataka government was forced to restart physical classes for school children after most of them lost a year without access to the internet or other devices to benefit from online education.

Data shared by the Karnataka government on July 1 shows that of the 9.3 million who have been accounted for, only 5,859,907 have smartphones/tablets and around 3,127,524 without any access to such devices. Further, there are just 5,134,386 students who have access to the internet while 3,779,965 students do not have access to the internet, rendering the exercise of online classes as a redundant practice for these children, mostly from rural and backward regions of the state.

In Bengaluru (rural, south and north), there are 178,612 students who have been accounted for out of the total 1,992,100. Of this, only 1,387,299 have a mobile number in which they can be contacted and just 1,452,207 have access to smartphones or tablets. Only 1,305,527 students have access to the internet and at least 401,269 have no access, data from the education department shows, Hindustan Times had reported on July 1.