Status of School Education in Bihar: An Analysis of UDISE+ 2020-21 Data Collected under Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan

 Arun C Mehta, Formerly Professor & Head of the EMIS Department, NIEPA, New Delhi

 Introduction

Since its independence, India has made spectacular progress concerning all aspects of school education, including universal access, participation, and retention. Still, the goal of universal school education is far out of reach. Quality of education is one of the significant areas of concern because many activities are now focused on improving learners' ability to read and write with understanding. Despite impressive progress, there are states far behind the others; without bringing all such states at par with the others, the dream of universal school education is not likely to be cherished shortly.

Bihar is one of the major states of India, with a 22,359 thousand child population which is 11.79 percent of the total population of India (1,89,593 thousand) of age 6 to 14 years. Almost every 12^th child of 6 to 14 years of India is located in Bihar. In addition, 93,459 (6.19 percent) of the total 15,09,136  schools covered under UDISE+ 2020-21 are located in Bihar. Without Bihar attaining the status of universal school education, India cannot achieve the goal for which concerted efforts are required to finish the unfinished task. Over time, Bihar, like other states of India, has made progress toward universalization. With a little push, it can move fast towards attaining the goal of universalizing elementary education, which would eventually help India achieve the goal of universal school education.

Another primary reason for picking up Bihar for detailed analysis is because the author of this article (Prof. Arun C Mehta) was closely associated with the state from the time of the Bihar Education Project, which later necessitated launching similar programs, such as DPEP and later SSA, on a pan-India basis. As a member of the UNICEF Mission to review the Bihar Education Project, popularly known as BEP, in 1994, the author got an opportunity to visit seven BEP districts of the undivided Bihar, which helped him to understand the ground reality to a great extent.

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Full length PDF Article

Revamping Student Database Management Information System In-sync with UDISE+ 2022-23

 Arun C Mehta
Former Professor & Head of the EMIS Department, NIEPA,  New Delhi

The Background

DISE (District Information System for Education) which later become the UDISE and is now popularly known as Unified-DISE or UDISE-plus was initiated in 1994-95 at the time of launching one of the mega programs of the Government of India toward universal primary education i.e. District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), over a period of time in a phased manner the same was extended first to the entire elementary level of education (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) and later to the secondary and higher secondary level of education (RMSA). The entire collection of school education data is being managed through the UDISE which has become the only source of statistics on school education in India with effect from the year 2012-13, the year in which the UDISE got the status of official statistics and all parallel collection of the information system was abandoned and UDISE remain the only source of information on school education statistics in India.

Even though widespread improvements were achieved in data collected through UDISE, but fingers have been raised on enrolment data collected through it which do not consider to be consistent which is reflected in the Table presented below:

Enrolment in Grades I to XII, 2012-13 to 2019-20

All India

Year	Enrolment
	Total, Grades I to XII	Change over Previous Year	%age Change
2012-13	25,42,75,128	-
2013-14	25,85,10,656	42,35,528	1.67
2014-15	25,94,70,306	9,59,650	0.37
2015-16	26,05,96,960	11,26,654	0.43
2016-17	25,13,36,317	-92,60,643	- 3.55
2017-18	25,09,89,193	-3,47,124	- 0.14
2018-19	24,83,38,584	-26,50,609	-1.06
2019-20	25,09,71,683	26,33,099	1.06
2020-21	25,38,04,461	28,32,778	1.13
Change over 2012-13	-	-33,03,445	- 0.19

                         Source: UDISE, different years.

SDMIS: 2016-17

Over a period of time, efforts were made to further improve the reliability and consistency of enrolment data among which the introduction of SDMIS in sync with UDISE in 2016-17 was the most prominent one which was initiated by NIEPA in consultation with the Department of School Education of the Ministry of HRD/Education. A specially designed SDMIS Data Capture Format was launched which initially had a total of 41 parameters and the idea was to generate UDISE enrolment based on the details of individual student information. Apart from the inconsistency of data, mismatching of enrolment by category, the medium of instructions, and age was another major issue because of which UDISE enrolment data was not considered reliable even though time lag in educational statistics was brought down from earlier 7 years to less than a year at the national level and only a few months at the state and district levels apart that all data gaps were bridged and the same was made available to users at all the levels, such as cluster, block, district, states and also at the national level.

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Downloading of UDISE Data from NIEPA & Ministry of Education Portals

 

By

Arun C Mehta

Formerly Professor & Head of EMIS Department

NIEPA, New Delhi

An attempt has been made in the present article to make data users aware downloading of UDISE+ data from the NIEPA & UDISE+ data portals concerning School Education Samagra Shiksha in India.

As we know that Unified District Information System for Education or Unified-DISE/U-DISE is the main source of information on educational statistics and is currently being managed by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India with effect from the year 2018-19 onwards before which it was initiated and managed by one of the apex educational planning institutions and technical arm of the Ministry of Education, namely the National Institute (University) of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA/NUEPA), New Delhi for the period from 1994-95 to 2017-18.

In this note, details of data available, how to download a publication or a set of data, and the level at which the same is available are explained which the young researchers/scholars would find useful. Apart from the UDISE+, there is no other source of information on school education on regular basis. However, the Census of India, NSSO, NFHS, and All India School Education Survey (AISES) are also used to disseminate information on educational variables occasionally. The latest AISES as a part of its Eight Survey was conducted in the year 2008-09. NCERT is also used to conduct the National Achievement Survey (NAS), the first of which was conducted in 2017, and the latest, second NAS was conducted recently in November 2021 details of which are now disseminated on its official website. 

DISE at NIEPA was initiated by Late Prof. Yashpal Aggarwal which later took it to new heights and nurtured by Prof. Arun C Mehta from 2002 to 2017 (January) and the same was located in the Department of Educational Management Information System (EMIS) of NIEPA, New Delhi. Professor Mehta was the founder  Head of the Department (HoD) and incidentally, the last HoD of the EMIS Department. During his tenure, DISE scaled new heights and got recognized as the Official Statistics by the Government of India, and received several prestigious awards.

However, the real hero of the whole exercise towards strengthening educational statistics was the district, block, and state MIS Coordinators from across the Country as well as the Cluster and Block Resource Coordinators and the respondents, the School Head Masters, teachers, and principals all who contributed significantly towards strengthening educational statistics in the Country; their contribution is immense and must be recognized and rewarded. Many of the programmers, data entry operators, and state and district In-charge of EMIS/DISE/UDISE+ have got vast experience managing EMIS at their level are contractual and low salaried, and must be acquired in the state services as and when such opportunities are there; they are the state assets and their services must be adequately used at all levels. While strengthening UDISE, many of them have now become age-bar and has no opportunity elsewhere. Needless to say that the school education plans across the Country under the umbrella of SSA, RMSA, and now under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan are formulated based on the UDISE data to which our friends had immensely contributed.

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Enrolment Projections in School Education in India: Has it become the History?

                                                           Prof. Arun C Mehta

Formerly Professor & Head of EMIS Department
NIEPA, New Delhi

 
In the early 1980s, the focus of plan formulation for school education in India was on scenario building and enrolment projections. It was a practice to formulate both the annual as well as five-year plans under the aegis of the Planning Commission which was later abandoned in 2014 when the same was replaced by the NITI Aayog which was also the end of formulating Five Year Plans; 12^th Five Year Plan (2012 to 2017) was the last under which Elementary Education Plan was lastly formulated. The approved plans were used to be treated seriously for which strategies were used to be adapted to implement the same. 

Pre-appraisal of plans with the Planning Commission Officers and state-level teams used to have intense discussion many times the same was used to be attended by state Chief Ministers. But still, at that time only state-specific plans used to be formulated and there was no emphasis on district-specific educational plans mainly because data below the state level was not generally available. Even educational data at the state level used to have had a time-lag of 7 to 8 years; thus indicating that the year 2000 annual plans were formulated based on data of 1993/94; thus plans were based on outdated data because of which enrolment projections and scenario building used to be in the focus. 

Renowned researchers, like Prof. M. K. Premi, Dr. A. B. L. Srivastava, Prof. Braham Prakash, etc, at that time, attempted enrolment projections but most of these exercises were still confined only to the state level.  The work of these researchers was later carried forward by researchers at NIEPA, New Delhi which includes Arun C Mehta. In addition, the Education Policy and Data Centre and Educational Survey Department of NCERT, New Delhi (Vishal D Pajankar and Sridhar Srivastava, 2019) also recently attempted enrolment projections and. methodology development.

Before the launch of the nationwide World Bank assisted District Primary Education Project (DPEP) in 1994-95; states have had the experience of UNICEF assisted Bihar Education Project (BEP),  SIDA assisted Lok Jumbish Project, IDA assisted Basic Education Project in Uttar Pradesh, ODA assisted Andhra Pradesh Primary Education Project, SIDA assisted  Shiksha Karmi Project and  Dutch assisted Mahila Samkhya programmes. 

Bihar Education Project was one of the early programmes which had provision of disaggregated target setting and enrolment projections with the emphasis on strengthening of EMIS in its district plans in seven-phase one districts. It was the DPEP that again emphasized disaggregated target setting in its district plan formulation The genesis of DPEP was the above mentioned state-specific experiments which had the following objectives: i) to provide access to all children to primary education; ii) to reduce overall dropouts at the primary level; iii) to increase achievement levels, and iv) to reduce disparities of all types. 

DPEP was the first mega programme launched as a centrally sponsored scheme that could reach 272 districts spread over 18 states which had the focus on (i) Local area planning; (ii) Greater rigour and infusion of professional inputs in planning and appraisal (iii) More focussed targeting in the selected districts, and (iv) More focussed coverage on primary stage with stress on education for girls and socially disadvantaged groups.

The whole exercise of district plan formulation under the DPEP was rigorous which had an emphasis on data analysis, projection of enrolment, and construction of indicators at the disaggregated levels and its implications for universalisation of primary education for which several capacity building programmes were conducted by the national level institutions across the country which were reflected in the district plans formulated later. It was mandatory to have set the target on enrolment ratio, retention rate as well as dropout rate for which intensive enrolment projections were mandatory which was part of the district plans. In the process of target setting, district planning teams come across a set of indicators that were never used before at that level. Special planning modules including one on enrolment and population projections were developed. 

Incidentally, even though many nation-wide programmes were initiated later but neither new planning modules were developed nor the existing modules were modified to meet the requirement of these programmes. During the target setting exercise through the enrolment projections, both the state as well district planning teams come across indicators, such as intake or admission rate, grade-to-grade dropout, promotion and repetition rate, grade ratio, enrolment-based indicators, and a host of other indicators. DPEP was discontinued in the year 2000 before it could fully achieve its objectives. Following an article by Arun C Mehta on enrolment projections at the national level, the World Bank initiated a project on state-specific enrolment projections perhaps that was the last of such exercise which were not seen even the country had many unfinished tasks and had launched many more mega programmes, such as Sarva Shiksha Abhivan & RMSA programmes. 

One of the other important benefits of DPEP was that it initiated the strengthening of EMIS in DPEP districts and states which was later become the basis of launching DISE. Nobody thought DISE would later attain such levels. With almost the same objectives but extended to the entire elementary level of education and across the country, another nationwide programme in the name of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan was launched as a centrally sponsored scheme in 2000-01 which also initially had provision for disaggregated target-setting but couldn’t maintain the legacy which it had inherited from the DPEP programme with the following objectives:   (i) All children in school by 2003; (ii) All children complete five years of primary schooling by 2007; (iii) All children complete eight years of schooling by 2010; (iv) Focus on elementary education of satisfactory quality; (v) Bridge all gender and social category gaps at primary stage by 2007 and at elementary education level by 2010; and (vi) Universal retention by 2010.

Except during the initial period of SSA that too only in a few selected districts, the tempo of formulating district plans in a decentralized model with emphasis on target setting and enrolment projections couldn’t be maintained. In the later period of SSA, it lost its focus and the whole exercise becomes more or less a monotonic exercise. During the later years, district plans used to develop even at the state level thus losing the focus in toto. 

Even after almost two decades of SSA, nobody knows how much of the SSA objectives have been achieved and what is the extent of the unfinished task. One of the significant achievements of SSA was a significant improvement in EMIS  through the DISE/UDISE which has completely eradicated time-lag in the availability of educational statistics across the country and liberalization of educational data which was made available to users in a hassle-free manner at all disaggregated levels, such as from school to cluster, block, district as well as at the state and the national level. What is more, than that the state and the district's plans started developing by using the current years' data in formulating plans but the same has had no rigor for intensive data analysis and target setting?  Not a single district and state could attempt target setting and enrolment projections in the later years of SSA. Enacting the Right of Education in 2009 was another important activity that took place during the SSA period because of which the emphasis on target setting on certain parameters further completely derailed. 

To tackle out-of-school children, the RTE Act advocates identification of the same and provides them special training duration of which vary from 3 months to two years and then make them sit in the age-appropriate grade because of which target setting in general and focus on enrolment projections completely lost. Since then there is no target date to achieve the goal of school education in India, there are no targeted dropout, retention, and transition rates all of which are termed important if the goal of universalization is to be attained. During the SSA, another important programme in the name of RMSA was launched in 2007-08 which had very limited scope for enrolment projections and target setting; hardly any state could have had seen undertaking projections exercise. The complete lack of focus on target setting continued till the end of SSA in 2018-19, the year in which both the SSA and RMSA were merged into one programme, i.e. Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan guidelines of which even do not mention target setting. No significant methodology change has been observed in Samgara Shiksha from the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan apart addition of a few new components, such as pre-school education because of NEP 2020. Plans are still being formulated based on a set of EXCEL Sheets where there is no scope for target setting and enrolment projections.

Even after three complete years of Samagra Shiksha, the framework for the implementation scheme for school education is still in draft form. A cursory look at the document however reveals that under the results framework document for planning and monitoring outcomes of the Samagra Shiksha, baseline (2016-17) as well cumulative target values for three years, namely 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 were supposed to be provided under the Project Development Objective on a host of parameters including enrolment, GER/NER, and transition rate separately in case of elementary and secondary & higher education levels without details as to how these values will arrive and what methodology is to be adapted for the same. One gets the impression that the previously used results framework of SSA and RMSA have been too adapted in Samagra Shiksha. It would be of interest to know how many states have been imparted training to fix these values and what is the outcome of the values fixed in terms of achievement as the first two years of the implementation have already been over.

It may be further observed that school enrolment has declined significantly in the recent past which is truer for elementary level of education which had shown a decline of 6.82 million (primary, 5.2 million) during the years 2015-16 to 2016-17 majority of which was experienced in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. Further, the Bihar government admitted in the state assembly that the enrolment of students in the government and government-aided schools had declined by 4 million in 2018-19 compared to 2014-15 (HT March 2, 2021).  The Economic Survey 2018-19 placed in the parliament stated that a significant decline in enrolment in elementary schools over the next two decades and advised states to merge schools than build up new ones. UNESCO recently released a projection covering 180 countries, estimating that 24 million children may not return to education in 2020 due to the pandemic including India (MINT August 2020). Significant decline in enrolment reiterated the importance of target setting and significance of enrolment projections in plan formulation in general and under Samagra Shiksha in particular. National level institutions, such as NIEPA must rejuvenate planning teams and initiate capacity-building programmes on plan formulation with emphasis on projections and target setting for both the district, as well as state planning teams.

 Enrolment Projections in School Education in India Has it become the History (PDF)

How Much We Gained: A Case of U-DISE+

 

Arun C Mehta
Formerly Professor & Head
Department of Educational Management Information System
National University of Educational Planning & Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi
(E-Mail: acmehta100@gmail.com & WhatsApp: +91 98681-84981)

Background
It is mandatory for each district of the Country to formulate Annual Work Plan and Budget under the aegis of the recently launched integrated School Education programme, namely the Samagra Shiksha which was also true for the previously launched nation-wide Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Elementary Education for All) programme. The concept of developing district plans was initiated during the World Bank assisted project, namely District Primary Education Programme (1994-95 to 2000-01) under which 272 districts across 18 states were covered. District Annual Plans are supposed to be appraised first internally at the state level which is in turn appraised by a team of Consultants at the Technical Support Group of Samagra Shiksha at the national level after which the same is submitted to the Project Approval Board for appraisal, approval, and release of the funds (in installments) to the State Implementation Society. District School Education Plans are supposed to be developed by the District Planning Team by following the plan formulation guidelines but in most of the districts plans are now being developed at the State level which generally lack academic flavor as the same in most of the cases is based on the EXCEL Tables designed by the Technical Support Group of Samagra Shiksha.

Annual Work Plans are exclusively based on the data generated through the Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE) which was till recently managed (1994-95 to 2017-18) by the apex National Institute/University of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA). District Information System for Education (DISE) was also initialed under the DPEP initially for the primary education which was subsequently extended to first, upper primary (elementary education), and then to the secondary and higher secondary levels of education and is termed as the most successful and longest initiative (a collaboration of NIEPA, UNICEF, and Ministry of HRD) towards strengthening EMIS/Educational Statistics in India. From the year 2018-19, renamed U-DISE+ is being managed by the Department of School Education and Literacy of the Ministry of Education/HRD technical aspects of which is being managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) located in the Ministry.

Till recently, it was a practice to formulate Annual Work Plans based on the current year’s data but the same is de-railed since the U-DISE has become U-DISE+ or the data collection and management work under U-DISE is transferred to the Ministry of Education which is now being managed by National Informatics Centre and Deputy Director-General located in the Ministry of Education. It is also of importance to mention that as of February 2021, data collection work concerning U-DISE 2020-21which should have been initiated as of 30^th September 2020 has not yet been started. Even data for the year 2019-20 is not available (in most of the states) and none of the set of 14-publications based on U-DISE 2017-18 and more recent years is made available in the public domain which was a routine practice till recently when the same was being managed by the Department of EMIS at NIEPA. Even U-DISE 2017-18 data in the form of Flash Statistics is yet to see the light of the day (now released in April 2021 without ritual Foreword & From the V-C’s Desk) but unfortunately, several articles have been published exclusively based on U-DISE 2017-18 data by other agencies other than NIEPA and Ministry of Education (formerly Ministry of HRD) and are available in the public domain (Recent Trends in India: Contractual Teachers by Vimla Ramachandran & Ganesh Nigam & School Education in India: Data Trends & Policies, Central Square Foundation)

Given the limitations in the educational statistics which was being managed by the Planning, Monitoring, and Statistics Unit of the Department of Higher Education located in the Ministry of Education, U-DISE was initiated in 1994-95 by NIEPA, New Delhi in collaboration with the UNICEF and Ministry of Education at the time the country launched one of the wide-spread programme concerning primary education with the support of the World Bank, namely the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP). The collaboration between these agencies is perhaps the longest one in the history of educational statistics in India which survived for almost three decades. Initially, DISE was to cater to the need of the primary level of education which was extended to the entire elementary level of education when the country launched another ambitious programme towards achieving the goal of universal elementary education through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme which was launched in 2001. 

Further with the RTE and RMSA, DISE Data Capture Format was modified to meet its requirement but there were two systems, one DISE, and the other SEMIS because of which there were lots of duplicity and wastage of resources. From the year 2012-13, by using one unified format, data from the entire school education, from primary to secondary and higher secondary levels of education is being collected and since then DISE is popularly known as U-DISE or Unified DISE and has acquired the status of the Official Statistics and all the parallel collection of information system in case of school education in India abandoned. Over the time the quality, sharing, dissemination, utilization, consistency of data improved but questions used to be raised about the quality and consistency of enrolment data because of which in the year 2016-17 an effort was made to collect individual student data on 35 parameters in-sync with U-DISE to generate all U-DISE enrolment tables based on student information and its very first year, detailed students records of around 210 million were collected but the whole exercise was discontinued in a year thereafter for unknown reasons. Because of the recommendations of the NEP 2020, it is heard that fresh efforts are being made to re-initiate the student data collection.

Below some of the achievements gained through U-DISE at NIEPA is listed:

Landmark Achievements: U-DISE up to the Year 2017

• Through the concerted efforts, MIS units have been made operational both at the district and state levels across the country and are equipped with necessary hardware and software.
• The U-DISE has eliminated data gaps as comprehensive information on all aspects of school education is now available over a period of time at all disaggregated levels, such as school, cluster, block, district, state, and national levels.
• Both the district elementary as well as secondary education plans are exclusively based on U-DISE data and annual plans were used to be developed based on the current year data which were submitted to the PAB for appraisal and approval.
• Liberalization of data to ensure that data reaches all data users in a user-friendly mode. A separate online channel was devoted to easy hassle-free downloading of the data and online generation of reports as per the requirement of users on hundreds of parameters.
• What is more remarkable about U-DISE is that it has drastically reduced the time-lag in the availability of educational statistics, which is now down from 7-8 years to about a year at the national level, and only a few months at the district and state levels.
• A set of 15 publications were used to be brought out annually covering both elementary as well as secondary levels of education.
• School Report Cards of an individual school for the period 2005-06 to 2016-17 were made available which also includes a rating of each school based on the 10 RTE parameters.
• Every bit of information collected through the U-DISE was made available to block, district, and state-level MIS units to ensure that data is adequately used where the strong U-DISE software having powerful reporter modules was installed, the officers used to generate all requisite indicators at their own at their desired levels. The data to state-level was provided by the block and district level MIS Officials which has had helped to create ownership and accountability of data.
• U-DISE was being managed by a small team at the national level with support from the UNICEF and Ministry with an annual budget of Rs. 10 million approximately. All the U-DISE websites were hosted in-house in NIEPA for which a special data center was developed which was equipped with necessary servers and other necessary equipment.
• For many years, data was cross-checked by a third party not involved in the data collection and SSA on sample basis sharing of which was used to be shared with all the stake-holders.
• The web-portal may be very attractive but of not much use unless the quality of data has been provided by the respondents which are qualitative in nature. Keeping this in the mind, numerous interactive programmes to discuss Data Capture Format with the respondents, namely school headmasters, CRC and BRC Coordinators, District, and State MIS Officers and other stakeholders were conducted over a period through EDUSAT which was used to be received by thousand and thousand respondents from across the country.
• It was an annual major activity to release the data in a special data release programme which was used to be attained by data users which have helped immensely in creating awareness about the data.

As has already been mentioned that U-DISE from the year 2018-19 is being managed by the Ministry of Education through the NIC, it is hoped that the quality, reliability, consistency, utilisation, sharing, and dissemination of data from the year 2018-19 from its 2017-18 level will further improve in the year that follows.  Before U-DISE was shifted to the Ministry of Education, there was a proposal for the national roll-out of Teacher Module as a part of the Extended U-DISE in the form of Shaala Kosh in May 2018 which was initiated by the Ministry towards “its efforts to revamp the existing U-DISE system to make it relevant to today’s educational requirements, this was an attempt to develop a comprehensive integration of State MIS Systems”. Before Shaala Kosh, the Ministry also had launched Shala Asmita Yojana (to replace U-DISE) the task of which was envisaged to be completed by February 2017 but nobody knows its status? In a letter to all the States & UTs on 29^th May 2018, through Annexure I concerning Shaala Kosh, the following observations regarding U-DISE are worth to mention some of which are also documented in the U-DISE+ Booklet produced by the Ministry (https://udiseplus.gov.in/#/Publication) at the time of taking over U-DISE from NIEPA is briefly presented below:

Quality of Data: “The current system does not incorporate a comprehensive list of validation checks which results in low data quality”.

Ease of Use: “The current system is offline and employee a pen-paper format to collect data. This results in yearly data collection exercise which is time-consuming and has monetary implications”.

Data Usage and Dissemination: “There is huge time-lag between data collection and data usage. The data is currently collected as of 30^th September and is used next year. This time lag results in usage and stale data and thus inaccurate decision making. The current system does not provide information to all the relevant stakeholders”.

Lack of Coordination and Supervision: “NIEPA lacked the requisite infrastructure, expertise, and authority for coordinating with officials of the States and UTs to ensure smooth and timely availability of the information. Further, the UDISE was being handled in the project mode by a small team, and data was hosted in a private server rendering it vulnerable”.

Lack of Accountability due to Absence of Audit Trail: “The data was uploaded in the system by district/block MIS officials who were contractual in nature. In many states, the data entry work was totally outsourced. Hence, there was no clear traceability/audit trail of those who were responsible for the authenticity of the information provided.” “Transfer of official at the cluster, block and district levels further compounded the problem as a result of which the data was never verified. Since there was no accountability, the officials concerned did not take adequate care to upload consistent and correct data, thereby compromising the reliability of the UDISE”

Multiple Versions of Data Collection Software: “Because of the limitations of UDISE, many states and UTs developed their own MIS systems to collect data required in UDISE DCF. Therefore at the national level, the Department had to contend with two sets of data. Thus, over time, the authenticity and utility of the UDISE gradually decreased and aggregation of data at the national level became difficult”

Single DCF for all Categories of Schools: “In UDISE there was one Master DCF for all schools irrespective of the category. However, many of the fields were not applicable to a particular category of school. “This created confusion as a result of which there were instances where the data for the relevant school category was wrongly inserted. Consequently, the information provided by the schools suffered from inconsistencies”.

Lack of Verification and Analysis of Data: “It was mandatory from 2006-07 for all states and UTs to carry out sample checking of U-DISE Data. However, largely due to the lack of proper guidelines, the verification of the UDISE data was hardly being carried out. Bulky paper reports were never analyzed and feedback was not made available to States and UTs.”

It is unfortunate to observe that even after almost three years of UDISE+, no visible improvement is observed concerning most of the above observations from its 2017-18 level. On top of the above, the time-lag which was brought to less than a year at the national level and only a few months at the block, district, and state levels have again started to increase. It was said that “the time-lag (under U-DISE) results in usage and stale data and thus inaccurate decision making” is now more true for U-DISE+ data. Not only the 2017-18 complete U-DISE data (15 publications) is yet to see the light of the day but initiatives made by the Ministry from 2018-19 data collection under U-DISE+ has further increased the time-lag in data. As of date, data collection for the year 2020-21 has not even been fully initiated (now initiated in April 2021), and work concerning 2019-20 data is still going on in many states. For two years, Annual Work Plans through EXCEL Tables under Samagra Shiksha were continued to be based on 2017-18 data which had no such tradition in the recent past.

One of the important visible changes which have been observed is the development of a dedicated portal for the U-DISE+ but that itself doesn’t guarantee improvement with regard to the concerns raised for taking over the U-DISE. It was expected that because of the online portal, data-entry will take place from the school but barring a few Secondary and Higher Secondary schools the same couldn’t be achieved simply because only 32.66 percent of the total 1.5 million schools covered under U-DISE+ have had a computer in the school as against 18.73 percent schools having the internet connectivity. Even only 63.43 and 32.70 percent of the total 39,077 Senior Secondary schools have had computer and internet connectivity in school in 2018-19 (see Table 2). The percentage of schools runs by the Department of Education having computer and internet facility is as low as 24.06 and 8.05 percent respectively. About 8,35,488 schools (53.87 percent) out of a total 15,51,000 schools covered under U-DISE+ during 2018-19 are government-managed schools of which 75.94 percent schools didn’t have a computer in school; for all practical purposes they are either dependent on cyber café or the Office of the BRC Coordinator where both the internet and computer facility is expected to be available but even these centers in many locations face the problem of uninterrupted (if available) power supply and bandwidth as most of them at these centers still has got access to only 2G connection. In addition, only 73.86 percent of the total 1.5 million schools had electricity connections in 2018-19. Apart from the schools run by the Department of Education, the majority of schools run by the other government departments including the Local Body Department (1,34,882 schools & 37.60 percent having computers) and Tribal Welfare Department  (31,435 schools & 8.37 percent having computers) also didn’t have access to computers and internet connection. As it seems without strengthening computer and internet facilities in schools across the country, off-line U-DISE was switched to on-line as a percentage of schools with these facilities over the same in 2017-18 do not show any significant improvement.  One can easily understand the plight of states where the majority of schools do not have access to the computer in the schools. Three states, namely Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh has a total of 5,16,523 schools imparting school education which is 33.30 percent of the total 1.5 million schools covered in U-DISE+ in 2018-19 which also means that one in every three schools in the country is located in these three states but these schools do not have got computer (89.50 percent) and internet (89.72 percent) connection in 9 out of every 10 schools. The percentage of schools with the computer is as low as 6.58 percent in Madhya Pradesh compared to 11.08 percent such schools in Bihar and 12.53 percent schools in one of the most populous states having the highest number of schools in the Country, i.e. Uttar Pradesh.  It would be of interesting to know how these schools would have managed data-entry during 2018-19. It is a moot question to know whether they made data-entry in on-line or off-line mode and also the location where data-entry was made and whether they took school records or filled-in paper DCF to a data-entry point i.e. mostly the BRC; thus forfeiting the basic purpose of developing a paperless U-DISE+. Unlike paper authentication (on DCF) by the school and other higher levels in the case of U-DISE, U-DISE+ prescribed on-line verification at each level. It is not known how on-line verification would improve the quality and consistency of data and on what basis block and other higher levels have approved the information submitted by the lower levels in the absence of information on paper? It has also been observed that despite being an online system, schools in most of the locations continue to maintain a hard copy of information fed into the online U-DISE+ system mostly soft copy of which is provided by the state level MIS by downloading the same from a link provided by the U-DISE+ national team.

In most of the other schools, data entry could take have done by the MIS Official either at the Block or District level which have had necessitated visit of the respondents i.e. School Head-Master/Teacher to the BRC Office which might have got access to a computer with electricity and internet connectivity; thus forfeiting the basic reason of developing an online paperless system.

The current system (i.e. U-DISE) does not provide information to all the relevant stakeholders was another observation but far from the reality. The beauty of the previous form of the U-DISE before taking over by the Ministry was that every bit of information was available to block, district and state MIS In-charge/Data-Entry operator on his/her own system which was equipped with the powerful reporter and consistency check module which in the new arrangement is completely missing as only limited data now reaches back to the lower levels which are provided by the national level authorities to state MIS which in turn reach lower levels. It was routine to generate reports by the district and block level MIS Officials by themselves by using the U-DISE Software installed on their terminal that is now made dependent on the higher authorities and feel handicapped which surely would affect the effective and adequate use of data.  At the time of taking over, it was said that “the current system does not incorporate a comprehensive list of validation checks which results in low data quality” even though U-DISE off-line software have had very strong consistency check modules on hundreds of parameters and was available to all the MIS staff irrespective of a level in the absence of which it is not known how the quality of data under U-DISE+ in general and enrolment data, in particular, would improve.

Dissemination and free availability of data were some of the strengths of U-DISE. A set of 15 publications were used to be brought out annually which is now completely discontinued. It is strange that nobody raises concerns about the missing publications, not even by the Project Approval Board of Samagra Shiksha. In addition to publications, users were provided raw data and an online portal to generate tables on hundreds of variables (2005-06 to 2016-17) which is also discontinued for unknown reasons. However, a comprehensive data sharing policy is now put in place which has a lot of restrictions on downloading and use of data. Department of School Education & Literacy will use pseudo code and school name rather than sharing the actual U-DISE Code for unknown reasons. The Department also reserves the right to deny access to any user with or without any reason? The earlier simple system of data sharing has now been made a bit complicated which may discourage users than encourage using data. As it seems, it is the end of liberalization of the use of school education data initiated in 2005-06 when school report cards were launched. Under the previous U-DISE, it was a usual practice to share dump of the entire data except for sensitive data (contact number, email, etc.) to institutional and other data users but under the new U-DISE+ system full set of data is not being shared and whatever, data is shared one has to bring it into usable form; thus if 15 users have been provided data, all 15 users will do the same to make the data usable.

Some of the other concerns raised are deliberated below:

Lack of Coordination and Supervision: “NIEPA lacked the requisite infrastructure, expertise, and authority for coordinating with officials of the States and UTs to ensure smooth and timely availability of the information. Further, the UDISE was being handled in the project mode by a small team, and data was hosted in a private server rendering it vulnerable” which is factually incorrect. NIEPA has got the adequate infrastructure for the smooth functioning of U-DISE. Yes, the U-DISE at NIEPA was being handled in the project mode by a small team which was the beauty of the system that was evolved over more than two decades. Achievements by a small team had always been applauded at different forums including by the Joint Review Missions of SSA and RMSA. It is glad that a small U-DISE Team could manage the affairs of the U-DISE over a period of time efficiently which the present large team loaded with multiple resources couldn’t deliver as envisaged at the time of launch of U-DISE+. U-DISE/SDMIS data was never hosted on a private server. A data center was developed at NIEPA where all the servers are located. Www.dise.in, www.udise.in, https:student.udise.in and www.schoolreportcards.in all are hosted in-house on servers installed in NIEPA. NIEPA doesn’t have the expertise is a joke of the day as it has got the best-experienced faculty those who have soiled their hands in playing with the numbers. Is the present leadership more experienced? It would not be an easy task for any agency to bring out a set of 15 publications annually. Time will show whether the new arrangement accepts this challenge or term the existing publications simply not required (nothing has been published as of now). Will it able to maintain and update www.schoolreportcards.in or the same may also not even found useful. Unfortunately, an institution lacking in expertise was allowed to be engaged for over more than two decades. Yes, NIEPA doesn’t have authority to directly deal with the States and UTs but it had never experienced any problem in communicating, coordinating, and dealing with the states which are evident with the fact that even in the absence of the letter released by the ministry before the launch of U-DISE 2016-17, it had successfully collected student data of about 210 million which by no standards is a mean achievement. States treat NIEPA and its Faculty more seriously than any other institution concerning MIS.

Lack of Verification and Analysis of Data: “it was mandatory from 2006-07 for all states and UTs to carry out sample checking of U-DISE Data… However, largely due to the lack of proper guidelines … the verification of the UDISE data was hardly being carried out. Bulky paper reports were never analyzed and feedback was not made available to States and UTs.” The statement is partially correct as this was perhaps one of the weak areas of U-DISE. Guidelines to conduct random sample checking of data were provided and are still available at www.dise.in because of which at one point of time as many as 27 states conducted such studies and submitted to the national level summary of which was made available to states and shared which is available in the public domain for five years. However, momentum couldn’t be maintained in the subsequent years because of inadequate funds for the same which despite the JRM recommendations, and repeated requests from the states were never been provided in the absence of which slowly the number of states conducting such studies declined. Major findings of studies conducted used to be shared with the states annually (in July) during the annual conference of MIS Coordinators of both SSA and RMSA. It was expected that sample checking of UDISE+ data across the country by an independent agency will soon be initiated but the task of checking of data is assigned to officers who are part of the system? Is this third-party verification? But, first let us wait for the full 2019-20 data, which is already late by more than a year as most of the states have missed the deadline. Preparation for U-DISE 2020-21 is supposed to be started in September 2020; do states and districts are left with enough time to utilize and analyze UDISE+ 2019-20 data? Even if the UDISE data of a year is populated next year, the same is not expected to be updated from the schools because of which it will be impossible for U-DISE+ to become real-time data in the real sense. In the process which is now been adopted, there is no date of reference (i.e. 30^th September), it is said that since it is real-time data, no date of reference is required? This is a departure from being followed over the last more than 50 years. Was it recommended by Experts or a committee headed by an expert, were the states taken into confidence, or was just decided by some individuals without knowing its implications? DISE/U-DISE may be a good case study to know how an institutionalized well-established project can be de-railed at the whims of an individual or two without acquiring any responsibility.

Lack of Accountability due to Absence of Audit Trail: “The data was uploaded in the system by district/block MIS officials who were contractual in nature. In many states, the data entry work was totally outsourced. Hence, there was no clear traceability/audit trail of those who were responsible for the authenticity of the information provided.” Transferring the U-DISE from NIEPA to the ministry will make the contractual staff regular? Since the transfer, how many of the MIS Officials are made regular? Was it because of NIEPA, the MIS staff are contractual, or because of the SSA Guidelines? Except, in the initial period, that too only in a couple of states, never the data entry work had ever been outsourced, totally a false statement. Bihar has outsourced Block Information Centre with one manpower and one Laptop for UDISE+, others may also have done similar arrangements for UDISE+ which is mainly because schools are not equipped to facilitate on-line data entry.  “Transfer of official at the cluster, block and district levels further compounded the problem as a result of which the data was never verified. Since there was no accountability, the officials concerned did not take adequate care to upload consistent and correct data, thereby compromising the reliability of the UDISE” Has the transfer now been stopped? Data was always supposed to be verified first at the cluster level by the CRC Coordinator (100 percent) and thereafter at the block (20 percent) and district level (10 percent). Also, there was a strong in-built consistency check module in U-DISE off-line software which is now missing in the new setup. Even a complete reporter module has not yet been provided. District MIS Coordinators/In-charges have not got access to raw data, unlike the previous arrangement under which every bit of information along with the reporter module to generate ‘n’ number of indicators at district and lower levels were made available. Instead of taking signature (on DCF) at all these levels, the emphasis is now on authentication at all these levels online, which is very tiresome for schools that do not get access to computers. Since data was not fed by the schools onto the online portal, the authentication in most of the cases is being carried out by the Data Entry Operators at the Block level which forfeited the basic purpose of developing an online system. Mute point is to ensure which is key to the quality of data is whether schools have submitted correct data? Which cannot be assured by taking signatures on-line or off-line? How many capacity-building programs, like through EDUSAT have been conducted and how many respondents (HMs, Principals, Head-Teachers, etc.) across the Country have been imparted training before the launch of the UDISE+?

Single DCF for all Categories of Schools: “In UDISE there was one Master DCF for all schools irrespective of the category. However, many of the fields were not applicable to a particular category of school. … This created confusion as a result of which there were instances where the data for the relevant school category was wrongly inserted. Consequently, the information provided by the schools suffered from inconsistencies”. False statement and questioned the understanding of those who are engaged in U-DISE+. Yes, U-DISE had only one DCF unlike 18 DCFs under present UDISE+ and was used to be printed from the SW for over more than a decade. The previous year’s data, except enrolment, was printed as per the category of school obtained based on the lowest and highest class in a school. As it seems officials engaged now were initially more confused than the respondents i.e. schools. Printed DCF from SW has had helped immensely in improving the consistency of data. All the schools were supposed to get 2017-18 populated data under U-DISE+ 2018-19 which is not true for schools that are upgraded in between. Despite the on-line system, the majority of schools got blank printed DCFs which are expected to adversely affect the quality and consistency of UDISE+ data. Were the filled-in DCF checked by the CRC Coordinators or being checked online only? Even at this stage, there is no alternative to the Printed DCF irrespective of how good schools are equipped with computer and internet connectivity.

Multiple Versions of Data Collection Software: “Because of the limitations of UDISE, many states and UTs developed their own MIS systems to collect data required in UDISE DCF. Therefore at the national level, the Department had to contend with two sets of data. Thus, over time, the authenticity and utility of the UDISE gradually decreased and aggregation of data at the national level became difficult” False statement, in fact, the quality and reliability as well as utility of U-DISE data improved with each passing year. What more one can expect that PAB used to appraise and approved annual work plans based on the current year’s data which has now been badly missed. The current year’s plans are no more developed using the current year’s data. Every year by now states used to submit data which is nowhere true now, we have already missed a year or two. There is now a gap of a year, 2019-20 data shall be used in 2021-22? In which years work plan? At the national level, states never at any point in time, submitted two sets of data. It is not because of the limitations of U-DISE data, states developed their own MIS systems just because of their state-specific requirements. After the transfer how many states have discontinued their own MIS systems is a mute question that must be answered. The majority of the states continues using their MIS systems despite the UDISE+ in place and will upload the data by using the Web Service/API onto the online portal. Is this an improvement over the previous arrangement? Certainly not! Previously, we have only one off-line uniform system, now we have more than 25 such systems. States who didn’t have the state MIS system previously are also now planning (like West Bengal) to develop one such system so that UDISE+ requirements are met.

It is expected that improvements as envisaged while launching the U-DISE+ will be visible in years that follow concerning time-lag, consistency, utilization, dissemination, sharing, quality, and reliability of data. Not only this, U-DISE+ has to maintained overall achievements of U-DISE which may not be an easy task. It is also hoped that the district planning module developed by NIEPA will be implemented in the real sense, for sure not only based on EXCEL Tables which may be resulted only if all those who are engaged in planning shake hands.

• U-DISE Vs UDISE-Plus (MS-DOC)
• U-DISE Vs UDISE-Plus (PDF)