In the contemporary educational landscape, particularly in a country like India digital competence stands as a crucial skill set for students to navigate the complexities of the digital age. Cultivating essential digital competence is imperative for students to thrive academically and prepare for future professional endeavors. The idea of digital competence evolved from technological advancement and the recognition by society of the need for new competencies. This paper presents the development and validation of a comprehensive digital competence tool tailored for higher secondary school students. The development process involves a meticulous analysis of existing digital competence frameworks, educational curricula, and contemporary technological trends. It is important to evaluate students’ digital competence level to identify areas of strength and weakness. Accordingly, educational interventions can be made to track their progress over time. This helps to ensure that students develop the essential skills necessary to navigate an increasingly digitalized society and workforce. The face and content validity of the scale was ensured. The digital competence scale was applied to a sample of 370 higher secondary students in Kerala for the study. Exploratory factor analysis was used for identifying the construct validity. The final scale evolved to have five factors such as Information and Data Literacy, Information seeking and management, Safety and Content Creation, Communication and Collaboration and Problem Solving with total 30 items. The reliability predicted by the Cronbach Alpha coefficient of the entire scale is 0.720.