BHUBANESWAR: The state government has decided to facilitate Odia certification courses on online basis for the benefit of Non-Resident Odias (NROs) and the students residing outside Odisha from 2017.
Announcing this here today, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) will conduct the lower Odia test. The curriculum of the test will be equivalent to class-VII standard Odia.
The chief minister said for this the Odisha Society of Americas (OSA) and other organisations had made an appeal to him earlier. "This will benefit the second generation of Odia children living outside the country and carry forward the grand legacy of our language," he said.
School and mass education minister Debi Prasad Mishra said the demand was also raised by the Odisha Society of the Americas as well as i-Gurukul of San Francisco during his visit to Silicon Valley, USA along with a delegation from Odisha.
Mishra said i-Gurukul is imparting Odia education and Odissi dance in USA for last 16 years. With the introduction of Odia curriculum and test, the second generation Odia living outside Odisha will get scope to learn their mother language, he said.
The Odia curriculum for the Certificate Course has been developed and uploaded in the website (www.bseodisha.nic.in) of Board of Secondary Education, Odisha. The test will be conducted once or twice a year, he said.