Digital Infrastructure in School Education: A Comparative Study of Nadia District in West Bengal

This research paper attempts to present an overview of the situation of digital infrastructure in school education in Nadia district, West Bengal. The paper mainly centers its focus on comparing the experiences of schools in urban settings as opposed to those in rural settings. With the emergence of COVID-19, the need to employ effective digital learning has been realized more than ever, with NEP 2020 placing emphasis on digital education as part of its reforms.. However, its implementation has been uneven with rural areas suffering a scarcity of digital resources. This study employs a mixed-method approach to probe into questions regarding the availability and functionality of digital tools and technologies; teacher preparedness and online teaching effectiveness. Results show that there is a highly disproportionate distribution of digitized infrastructures: Urban schools have much more access to digitized infrastructures than their rural counterparts. Educators within urban contexts are trained to higher degrees and have greater resource availability; those working in rural contexts face significant challenges including inadequate facilities and limited technical support for troubleshooting issues with technology on an institutional level. These findings call for specific interventions toward building digitized infrastructure within rural education networks about connectivity, training teachers, and resources. It also hopes to fill these gaps so that it can provide practical policy recommendations intended to achieve equitable quality access to education for all pupils in Nadia district.