Teachers of schools across the country should learn to use the new electronic reading and writing tools to help them improve their writing skills, an education and training body has said.

National Education Association of India (NEAI) chairman Ashish Thapar said teachers of school children, parents and other stakeholders must learn to recognise the need for digital literacy, and teach them to write by using the new tools.

He said the government’s digital literacy programme was a crucial component in getting all of the 1.3 billion children reading in primary and secondary schools across India to read, write and communicate digitally.

“The digital literacy programmes in India have been developed with the aim of getting every child reading and working digitally by 2020,” Thapur said.

The NEAI has called for more data collection, a more robust data-sharing mechanism and a better use of existing tools.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has also urged schools to develop digital literacy programs.

“We need to make the process of learning to read more inclusive.

The digital literacy training of teachers should be tailored to the age of the child,” NCERT president Dr Manish Kumar told reporters in New Delhi.

He added that there is a need for an efficient data-matching and sharing mechanism for teachers to identify children who are struggling with digital literacy.

“As many as 85 per cent of the schools in India do not have digital literacy kits in the classroom,” he said.

He also said that digital literacy should be a fundamental element of every school education programme.

“It is not enough to simply teach reading and write,” Kumar said.