Education For All in India: support
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label support. Show all posts

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Observations on Samagra Shiksha

Free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of fourteen is the constitutional commitment in India. Despite spectacular quantitative expansion in every sphere of elementary education, the goal to achieve universal enrolment is still a far distant dream in a real sense.  While adopting the constitution in 1950, the goal of UEE was to be achieved in ten years i.e. 1960.  Keeping in view the educational facilities available in the country at that time, the goal of UEE was far too ambitious to achieve in a short span of ten years.  Hence, the target date was revised several times.  During the decade 1991-2001, a number of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, as well as, new programmes and projects were initiated across the country.  The Operation Blackboard scheme initiated in 1987 also got momentum during this period so as the large number of District Institutes of Educational Training (DIETs) established across the country. 


The Andhra Pradesh Primary Education Project, Bihar Education Project, UP Basic Education Project, 
Lok Jumbish and Shiksha Karmi projects of Rajasthan and District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) were the main state-specific programmes initiated during 1991-2001. The mid-day meal scheme was also initiated during this period. Primary education remained the focus of all these programmes. The DPEP which came to an end in 2000 was implemented in 272 districts across 18 states. 

The most recent ambitious programme, namely Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was launched by the Government of India in 2001envisaged covering all non-DPEP districts before the end of the Ninth Five-Year Plan with a focus on the entire elementary level of education. 

Initially, the focus of SSA was to further strengthen infrastructure in schools which was later shifted initially to increase enrolment (in terms of enrolment ratio, drop-out, and transition rate) and later focused more on improving quality of education. Under the aegis of SSA, a number of programmes were launched and several studies were conducted (mostly by the Technical Support Group of SSA) in the beginning but later the momentum couldn’t be maintained. One of the significant visible achievements of SSA was strengthening the Educational Management Information System through DISE/U-DISE initiatives which had later acquired the status of the Official Statistics in 2012-13.

Initially, the aim of SSA was to bring all the out-of-school, never enrolled, and dropped-out children back to school by 2003, achieve UPE by 2007, and UEE with satisfactorily quality of education by 2010 but nobody knows what had happened to all these targets. Targets of 2003, 2005, and 2010 show national commitment but no state-specific targets were set down in the process of which all states including Kerala and Bihar was given the same year to achieve the objectives of SSA. Neither district-specific target was set down.

A thorough diagnosis exercise would have revel how many years a state and district would take to achieve the goal of UPE and UEE but the momentum of data analysis couldn’t be maintained barring an initial period of SSA. Later the concept of participatory planning lost focus so as the development of district plans in a decentralized mode. 

A number of capacity building programmes with an emphasis on the data analysis and use of indicators in planning were conducted across the county.  Barring the initial period, later district plans started formulating at the State level and planning teams remained on paper.  In most cases, Block development plans as envisaged in SSA couldn’t be developed so as the School Development plans based on which District plans were envisaged to be developed. 

In 2007, SSA extended to the secondary level of education in the form of RMSA. In 2009, Right to Education was enacted ensuring that every child of age 6 to 14 years is enrolled because of which there is no target year by which UPE and UEE are to be achieved which is continued. The local authorities are supposed to identify out-of-school children at the beginning of an academic year which is then to provide special training of 2 months to 3 years and then to make them sit in the age-appropriate class. No data is available as to how many such students were made to sit in a class and how many of them continued and have completed Grade V and VIII. Change in the planning methodology because RTE is also not available in the public domain but district plans continued to be developed based on the EXCEL Tables.

SSA inherited a legacy of rich experience of DPEP but it couldn’t sustain many of the best practices of the DPEP and it had become a routine and mechanical exercise year after year and lost focus. During the entire period of SSA, 2001 to 2018, it was never externally reviewed barring annual review by the Joint Review Mission even though there was a change in the federal government.   For about 15 years, SSA plans were being formulated, appraised, approved and money released based on the 50+ Excel Tables provided by the Technical Support Group of SSA.  

In the initial years of SSA, the process of plan formulation was a bit scientific but later everything gained over the previous such programmes lost and plans lack academic flavour.  NIEPA is said to be known as an apex body in the areas of capacity building and planning and had played an important role during DPEP implementation. But so far as the SSA is concerned its planning methodology, barring an initial period is not in the public domain.
It never took up the issue of plans being formulated based on EXCEL Sheets with the Ministry of HRD in the absence of which the outcome of the capacity building programmes which it had conducted is not reflected in the plans being formulated. But such programmes conducted by the NIEPA have contributed immensely to developing an understanding of both the district and state-level officers in the areas of MIS, indicators of educational development, planning methodology, and data analysis which is true for both SSA and RMSA. In each state, one person well versed engaged in planning over years and have a good understanding of SSA and RMSA parameters, use of indicators, and its implication for planning can be identified but such officers are not large in number. 

NIEPA faculty played important role at the beginning of SSA and conducted a good number of programmes on planning methodology and have also played important role in Appraisal Missions constituted by the Ministry but this exercise which was found useful by both the members of appraisal as well states discontinued for unknown reasons; instead, the concept of internal appraisal was introduced which was never found effective.  Whatever one wants to achieve can only be achieved through the active participation of teachers for which provision of in-service was made in SSA. During SSA the focus of capacity building of teachers was transferred from DIET to Block Resource Centres across the County. By and large, DIET continues to engage in B.Ed and Diploma programmes and few programmes it used to conduct were also decided at the State level (generally SCERT) which is generally not found need-based and as per the requirement of teachers but the same was an easy tool to spend a good amount of money allotted. The quality of school education was also badly reflected by the provisions of RTE, namely no detention and no exam policy at the elementary level of education which resulted in demand by the states to scrap the same which was later approved by the parliament through amendment in the Constitution. Even though SSA was extended to the Secondary level through RMSA but the same was limited only to Government schools and even aided schools were not covered. 

One of the other limitations of the programme was the issue of prioritization because of which during the initial period of SSA schools were opened where they were not viable to be opened which were later merged with other schools or a few of them were even closed down. This was also true for the construction of additional classrooms and other facilities. Despite all these limitations, significant progress was made during the SSA period but the same was focused more on to further strengthen infrastructure in schools or on input variables. At the end of SSA, the following set of data reveals the progress made and the size of the unfinished task.

Status of School Education: Year 2017-18

·       Number of Schools: 15,58,903

·       Percentage of Private Schools: 20.67%

·       Total Teachers, Grades I to XII: 92,47,361

·       Percentage of Trained Teachers : 81.39%

·       Percentage of Single-Teacher Schools (Government): 7.82%

·       Percentage of Single-Classroom Schools (Government): 3.99%

·       Percentage of Schools with Computer(s): 29.57%

·       Percentage of Schools with Functional Computer(s): 13.07%

·       Percentage of Schools with Electricity: 63.14%

·       Percentage of Schools with Internet Connection: 13.61%

·       Total I to XII Enrolment: 25,09,89,193

·       Enrolment in Grades I to V & NER: 12,23,78,400, 82.53%

·       Enrolment in Grades VI to VII & NER: 6,54,48,222, 72.62%

·       Enrolment in Grades I to VII & NER: 18,78,26,622, 85.18%

·       Enrolment in Grades IX to X & NER: 3,84,80,023, 52,14%

·       Enrolment in XI & XII & NER: 2,46,82,548, 32.60%

·       Enrolment in Grade I: 1,31,37,951 Boys & 1,19,49,359 Girls

·       Average Annual Drop-out Rate, Primary level: 3.51%

·       Average Annual Drop-out Rate, Upper Primary level: 5.02%

·       Average Annual Drop-out Rate, Elementary level: 4.03%

·       Average Annual Drop-out Rate, Secondary level: 18.51%

·       Average Annual Drop-out Rate, Primary level: 2.77%

·       Retention Rate at Primary level: 86.11%

·       Retention Rate at Elementary level: 71.06%%

·       Retention Rate at Secondary level: 57.72%

·       Transition Rate from primary to Upper Primary level: 90.78%

·       Transition Rate from Upper Primary to Secondary level: 89.23%

·       Transition Rate from Secondary Higher to Secondary level: 68.05%

·       Gender Parity Index, Primary Grades: 1.02

·       Gender Parity Index, Upper Primary Grades: 1.11

·       Gender parity Index, Secondary Grades: 1.03

·       Gender parity Index, Higher Secondary Grades: 1.02

·       Completion Rate at Secondary Level: 64.97%

 As it seems that most of the indicators have improved over a period of time but the drop-out rate remained high which would significantly influence the objective of universal school enrolment. Another important issue is the decline in enrolment across school levels over a period of time is a major area of concern that must be thoroughly examined to find out the exact causes of decline which is across the country.  Net Enrolment Ratio is 85 percent which if not further improve to significant effect, enrolment in other higher levels cannot improve. Needless to mention that enrolment in upper primary and other higher levels can only improve if enrolment in primary classes is further improved which would happen only if the efficiency of the primary level of education is improved. This is also true for Higher Education which unless received an adequate number of Higher Secondary graduates, cannot increase on its own. 

Till recently plans were being developed separately for the elementary and secondary level of education, which now under Samagra Shiksha, are supposed to be developed for the entire School education level as one entity by one planning team but as of now the same old model of developing plans based on EXCEL Sheets is still going on. The only difference is that the entire set of EXCEL Tables are divided into three parts, elementary and RTE, Teacher education, and Secondary and higher secondary levels of education which are then provided to the person-in-charge looking after these components under the aegis of Samagra Shiksha. Hardly any research studies have been undertaken to see the impact of SSA and RMSA and whether its objectives have been achieved and if not, what are the reasons for non-achievement.

It may also be of interest to know that two separate district plans were used to be developed one each for elementary under SSA and another secondary level of education under RMSA by the two different agencies. In the initial years of RMSA, even there were two separate JRMs as well as PAB to approve annual plans. Till 2011-12, even DISE was also separately been managed by the Office of SSA and RMSA with a provision of two Data Capture Formats, one online application for SEMIS and another off-line software for SSA, two Nodal officers, one each for SSA an RMSA but there was only one data entry point because of which there was a lot of duplicity of efforts being made towards achieving the goal of school education in India. Maybe because of these reasons, Samagra Shiksha was launched in 2018-19 to meet the challenges of unfinished tasks of school education in India.