Hyderabad: Microsoft Corporation India has signed a MoU with the Andhra Pradesh government to roll out Project Shiksha in Andhra Pradesh. The MoU underlines a joint commitment by Microsoft and Government of Andhra Pradesh towards accelerating IT literacy in the state. The MoU aims to reach out to over four lakh students and over twenty thousand teachers in Government schools (Class III - Class XII) over a 5 year period.

The MoU entails the setting up and running of a Microsoft IT Academy Centre in the state to facilitate teacher training. This will be a world class facility equipped with a state of the art IT lab encompassing hardware, software, curriculum and staff for effective delivery of educational facilities and administration. The MoU also entails formulation and implementation of a comprehensive teacher training program, creation of a localised IT curriculum for students, rolling-out of teacher and student scholarship programmess and setting up of a teachers portal.

With a $ 20 million investment, Project Shiksha is geared to reach out to 3.5 million students and 80,000 school teachers across government schools in the country over the next 5 years.