Tamil Nadu’s Mozhigal programme was designed to use digital infrastructure to improve spoken English among students in Classes VI to VIII. Three years after its launch, the programme’s reported decline shows that providing technology is only the first step in building a functioning public education service. Without reliable equipment, protected classroom time and regular administrative monitoring, a live portal can exist without a live programme.
Mozhigal was launched by the Tamil Nadu State Council for Educational Research and Training, or SCERT, with the stated aim of improving students’ spoken English through games, video modules and frequently asked questions. Teachers were expected to access the portal through their Education Management Information System login IDs from computer laboratories in government schools.
The programme’s design placed it at the intersection of curriculum and school infrastructure. It required not only digital content but also functioning computers, connectivity, power backup, teacher access and a timetable that allowed students to use the system consistently. The report indicates that these conditions have weakened, leaving the programme largely inactive in the schools covered by the report.
The problem is not described as the formal closure of Mozhigal. School heads said the portal remains active, but classes are rarely held. That distinction is important. A digital service can remain technically available while becoming operationally irrelevant if schools cannot allocate time, equipment and staff attention to it.
### When a timetable becomes an infrastructure issue
According to a headmaster quoted in the report, Mozhigal had dedicated periods during its first two years. Students and teachers were reportedly keen to participate during that period. In the past year, however, no separate period was allocated. Classes were instead conducted during the hi-tech lab period, which was also used for other activities and assignments.
This change turned a defined programme into a residual activity. Once a class no longer has protected time, it must compete with the wider workload of the school. The issue is therefore not simply whether the portal works. It is whether the programme has a recognised place in the daily operation of a government school.
For digital learning, scheduling is part of service delivery. Students cannot build confidence in spoken English through occasional access to a portal, particularly when the programme depends on games, video modules and interactive exercises. The report does not provide attendance figures, usage data or assessment results, so the scale of learning loss cannot be quantified from the available evidence. It does, however, document a clear implementation gap between the programme’s original design and its current use.
The experience also illustrates why public technology programmes are often judged too narrowly. A portal may be counted as available because it has not been deactivated, while the conditions required for meaningful use have deteriorated around it. In Mozhigal’s case, school-level accounts point to both scheduling pressure and hardware problems.
### The maintenance contract is part of the programme
Teachers told the Times of India that several systems became non-functional after Larsen & Toubro’s contract to maintain the hi-tech laboratories ended last year. They cited connectivity problems and an inadequate number of uninterruptible power supply units. One teacher said several students had to share a computer, making it difficult for them to learn.
These are not peripheral inconveniences. They affect the basic operating model of a computer-based language programme. Connectivity determines whether digital content can be accessed reliably. Power backup affects whether sessions can continue. The number of working computers influences how much time each student gets to interact with the content.
The reported maintenance gap also raises an institutional question: who is responsible for keeping a technology-enabled education service operational after an external contract ends? The supplied report does not establish whether a replacement contract was issued, whether schools were given maintenance budgets or whether responsibility shifted to another department. That information would be necessary to assess the procurement and accountability chain in detail.
What is evident is that the technology layer and the academic layer cannot be separated. If a school has too few functioning systems, teachers may be unable to run the planned activity. If the activity is not formally timetabled, equipment may not be prioritised for it. Each weakness reinforces the other, reducing the programme’s practical visibility inside the school.
### The content pipeline has also stalled
The report identifies a third concern: a SCERT faculty member said new modules had not been uploaded to the portal. The faculty member also said there were plans to make the window more interactive, but that no update had taken place.
A digital programme aimed at students in Classes VI to VIII requires more than a one-time launch package. Its content must remain usable for teachers and relevant to successive cohorts of students. The absence of new modules, as reported, suggests that the programme’s content pipeline may not be keeping pace with its stated objective of interactive learning.
Again, the available material does not establish how frequently new modules were originally expected, how many modules exist or whether the portal has recorded declining usage. Those details matter because a lack of updates could reflect a temporary delay, a change in curriculum strategy or a deeper breakdown in programme management. The report supports only the narrower finding that teachers and a SCERT faculty member described the platform as lacking recent updates.
The absence of a response from SCERT director N Latha leaves several administrative questions unanswered. The report says chief educational officers and district educational officers had not raised the issue, according to the SCERT faculty member. It is not clear from the supplied material whether this reflects a lack of complaints, inadequate monitoring or limited awareness of conditions in individual schools.
### Monitoring determines whether a scheme exists on the ground
Mozhigal’s reported difficulties point to a familiar governance problem in public infrastructure: implementation is distributed across several levels, but failure is experienced locally. SCERT is associated with the programme’s design and content. Schools provide the physical setting and timetable. Education officers are expected to oversee the system within their administrative jurisdictions. Maintenance arrangements determine whether the laboratories remain usable.
When these responsibilities are not connected through routine monitoring, a programme can remain present in official systems while disappearing from everyday practice. The report does not show that any single institution caused the lapse. It shows instead that the programme’s continued operation depends on coordination between curriculum authorities, schools, maintenance providers and field-level officers.
Retired headmaster M Ramalakshmi called for spoken English to be made compulsory and included in internal assessments. She also sought regular inspections by block education officers. These suggestions reflect a demand for stronger institutional incentives, but the report does not state whether the government has accepted them or whether any policy change is under consideration.
The assessment question is central. If spoken English is not graded or otherwise incorporated into the school’s formal academic priorities, teachers may find it difficult to protect time for the programme when other assignments and activities compete for the same period. At the same time, formal assessment alone would not solve the equipment and maintenance problems described by teachers. The programme requires both academic recognition and operational support.
### The missing data is itself significant
The report contains no statewide figures on the number of schools using Mozhigal, the condition of the hi-tech laboratories, student participation, teacher training, portal log-ins or learning outcomes. It also does not identify the number of schools affected by connectivity problems or inadequate UPS units.
Without such information, it is not possible to determine whether the programme is facing a statewide failure, a problem concentrated in particular districts or uneven performance between schools. Nor can the effectiveness of the original intervention be measured. The evidence currently available is qualitative, based on accounts from school heads, teachers, a SCERT faculty member and a retired school head.
That limitation does not make the implementation issue unimportant. It makes transparent monitoring more important. A programme that depends on government-owned digital infrastructure needs routine indicators that go beyond whether a portal is technically online. Schools would need to know whether laboratories are functional, whether sessions are being held, whether students can access individual devices and whether content is being updated.
Mozhigal therefore represents more than a stalled spoken English initiative. It is a test of whether public institutions can maintain the full chain required by digital service delivery: equipment, power, connectivity, content, timetable, supervision and feedback. The report suggests that several links in that chain have weakened, but it does not establish the precise point at which responsibility was lost.
The next step for the programme would be visible clarification of its operational status. That includes whether dedicated class periods will return, how laboratory maintenance will be handled, when new modules will be uploaded and whether block, district and state officials will monitor usage. Until those questions are answered, Mozhigal’s active portal will continue to represent a wider problem in public technology: availability on a screen is not the same as access in a classroom.
