Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan

Global Campaign for Education: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan

Program with the help of UNICEF in India

As part of the Mid-term Strategic Plan and the Millennium Development Goals priorities, UNICEF India is committed to ensuring quality education for all children, especially girls. The current Master Plan of Operations (MPO) in cooperation with the Government of India (2003-2007) supports the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the national plan for the universalization of elementary education, to ensure all children have access to quality education and complete a full course of primary schooling. The following key messages will be addressed

1). Achieving EFA depends on having enough teachers

2) teachers need to be professionally trained, adequately paid and well-motivated to achieve EFA goals

3) there must be sufficient financing for the expansion of education system

19 % of the total primary schools are single teacher schools in India catering to nearly 12% of the total enrolment in primary classes (DISE 2004). Systemic factors - lack of teachers (especially female), teacher absenteeism, irregular classes, overcrowded classrooms, and traditional methods of rote learning – have diminished the quality of teaching/learning and the support teachers and schools can provide children. As part of a growing move toward greater accountability and transparency, political leaders and administrators have begun to raise the issues of motivation and commitment among teachers and local administrators. While there have been great advances in access, there is a realization that challenges persist and many children actually leave primary school without learning the basic skills of reading and writing. While the literacy rate of the country has reported a sharp increase from 18.39% in 1950-51 to 65.38% in 2000 -2001, one-third of the population, or nearly 300 million people in the age group 7 years and above are still illiterate in the country. 42 million children in the age-group 6-14 years, do not attend school. There are also problems related to high drop out rates, low level of achievement, low participation of children from disadvantaged sections of society. Approximately 16.64 per cent villages of the country do not have facilities of primary schooling. There are other problem areas such as inadequate school infrastructure, non-availability of teachers in remote rural, hilly and tribal areas, high teacher absenteeism, large scale teacher vacancies, and inadequate allocation of resources on education to meet the expenditure. Within India, the teacher absence rate ranges from 15% in Maharashtra to 42% in Jharkhand. Again 16.29 per cent schools in the country still do not have two teachers. While Kerala has an average of 6 teachers in primary schools, in states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan the average number of teachers is even lower than 2. Uttar Pradesh still faces difficulty to provide even a single teacher in 921 primary schools. The average Pupil Teacher Ratio for All India is 1:42. Bihar has the worst teacher pupil ratio at 1:83. Though enrolment rates have shot up, there has not been a corresponding increase in the number of teachers.


© UNICEF/India/2006
Systemic factors - lack of teachers (especially female), teacher absenteeism, irregular classes, overcrowded classrooms, and traditional methods of rote learning – have diminished the quality of teaching/learning
Teacher absence is more correlated with daily incentives to attend work: teachers are less likely to be absent at schools that have been inspected recently, that have better infrastructure, and that are closer to a paved road. Absence rates are generally higher in low-income states.
To overcome the problem of teacher shortage and teacher absenteeism the para teacher scheme has been introduced in India. Para educators are generally members of the same community in which they teach, and therefore, share many of the experiences and cultural practices of their students, including their primary languages and cultural practices. In India, the state of Rajasthan has successfully overcome the problem of both teacher shortage and teacher absenteeism through these para teachers under the 'Shiksha Karmi Project' which is also the origin of para teacher scheme in the country. In India, the state of Rajasthan has successfully overcome the problem of both teacher shortage and teacher absenteeism through para teachers. India at present has more than 500 thousand para teachers in a number of states. The Government has pursued a fivefold strategy since the 1990's to improve the quality of education in general. These include – improvement in the provision of infrastructure and human resources for primary education; provision of improved curriculum and teaching learning material; improvement in the quality of teaching learning process through the introduction of child centered pedagogy; attention to teacher capacity building, especially female teachers; and increased focus on specification and measurement of learners' achievement levels.
With increased involvement of community in management and running of schools, as well as enhanced teacher support and development, it is expected that the issue of absenteeism will be addressed in time to come.
With its partners, UNICEF is developing and demonstrating a replicable model of quality education that can be scaled up. The project is working to demonstrate the Quality Package in a number of schools and its impact on attendance, completion and learning; and to monitor, document and disseminate the costs, processes and impact of delivering the Quality Package.
The key activities for delivering the Quality Package are; (i) delineating quality in four key areas: school and classroom environment, teaching-learning processes, teacher support, school and community linkages; (ii) evaluating each school's situation to understand and develop plans on how best to reinforce school effectiveness and enhance student learning; (iii) curriculum development, teacher support and training, and strengthening community involvement; and (iv) developing a child-friendly environment by advocating for child-centered teaching-learning processes, creation of a school government and maintaining high hygiene and sanitation and safety standards.
As measurement of progress is very important, the District Information System in Education (DISE), a UNICEF-supported initiative, has emerged as the official computerized database for monitoring key education indicators (gross/net enrolment, school infrastructure, teachers) – covering 539 districts across India in 2005.
In collaboration with the Education Department of the Government of Gujarat, UNICEF has launched a Life Skills program in three districts of Gujarat, covering about 147 schools. A total number of 243 teachers have been trained. The four day training program equips the teachers with the ten basic life skills of self awareness, empathy, problem solving, decision making, effective communication, interpersonal relations, creative thinking, critical thinking, coping with emotions and coping with stress. This has already kick-started the process of turning class rooms into child friendly spaces, with no barriers between teachers and students.

Education in India

Education is divided into preprimary, primary, middle (or intermediate), secondary (or high school), and higher levels. Primary school includes children of ages six to eleven, organized into classes one through five. Middle school pupils aged eleven through fourteen are organized into classes six through eight, and high school student's ages fourteen through seventeen are enrolled in classes nine through twelve. Higher education includes technical schools, colleges, and universities.

Article 42 of the constitution, an amendment added in 1976, transferred education from the state list of responsibilities to the central government. Prior to this assumption of direct responsibility for promoting educational facilities for all parts of society, the central government had responsibility only for the education of minorities. Article 43 of the constitution set the goal of free and compulsory education for all children through age fourteen and gave the states the power to set standards for education within their jurisdictions. Despite this joint responsibility for education by state and central governments, the central government has the preponderant role because it drafts the five-year plans, which include education policy and some funding for education. Moreover, in 1986 the implementation of the National Policy on Education initiated a long-term series of programs aimed at improving India's education system by ensuring that all children through the primary level have access to education of comparable quality irrespective of caste, creed, location, or sex. The 1986 policy set a goal that, by 1990, all children by age eleven were to have five years of schooling or its equivalent in no formal education. By 1995 all children up to age fourteen were to have been provided free and compulsory education. The 1990 target was not achieved, but by setting such goals, the central government was seen as expressing its commitment to the ideal of universal education.

The Department of Education, part of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, implements the central government's responsibilities in educational matters. The ministry coordinates planning with the states, provides funding for experimental programs, and acts through the University Grants Commission and the National Council of Educational Research and Training. These organizations seek to improve education standards, develop and introduce instructional materials, and design textbooks in the country's numerous languages (see The Social Context of Language, ch. 4). The National Council of Educational Research and Training collects data about education and conducts educational research.

State-level ministries of education coordinate education programs at local levels. City school boards are under the supervision of both the state education ministry and the municipal government. In rural areas, either the district board or the panchayat (village council--see Glossary) oversees the school board (see Local Government, ch. 8). The significant role the panchayat play in education often means the politicization of elementary education because the appointment and transfer of teachers often become emotional political issues.

State governments provide most educational funding, although since independence the central government increasingly has assumed the cost of educational development as outlined under the five-year plans. India spends an average 3 percent of its GNP on education. Spending for education ranged between 4.6 and 7.7 percent of total central government expenditures from the 1950s through the 1970s. In the early 1980s, about 10 percent of central and state funds went to education, a proportion well below the average of seventy-nine other developing countries. More than 90 percent of the expenditure was for teachers' salaries and administration. Per capita budget expenditures increased from Rs36.5 in FY 1977 to Rs112.7 in FY 1986, with highest expenditures found in the union territories. Nevertheless, total expenditure per student per year by the central and state governments declined in real terms.

Education system in India

Our higher education system is widespread, and while the quality of it is very mixed, there are still a lot of people getting reasonable higher education.

In some fields, especially in technical education, the quality of what is offered is indeed fairly high. Against these "positives" stand the huge neglect of primary education and also secondary education, and of course - as already mentioned - the highly variable
quality of university education (some of it not worthy of that name).

The pitfalls of illiteracy include functional handicap, intellectual deprivation, and social disadvantage. When large groups are systematically neglected, like girls, especially from economic and social underdog families, the social penalties are gigantic.

The main causes of our uneven and highly unequal educational system are not technological underdevelopment but political and social neglect.

It is, of course, important for those who are masters of contemporary technology to take deep interest in removing the educational neglects that plague the country, but they have to look for the diverse ways and means of helping, rather than sticking only to their identities as "high technologists"!

Any sector that become as rapidly - and as convincingly - prosperous owes something to the rest of the society as well, but that is not the same thing as looking only to technology to solve all problems.

Technology can certainly help the spreading of education, for example in making the schooling of math easier and faster, and even in monitoring the attendance and accountability of teachers and of school officials , or in making communication of elementary math easier, but it is not the lack of a
"technological magic bullet" that is holding everything up.

The main "step" to take is to get on with it! The government has to speed things up. However, the government is not the only agency involved. Not only more money is needed in schooling - not just through raising salaries of teachers and officials - but also better organization of teaching and better practices (not minimal schooling with maximal private tuition!).

For this we need cooperation between many agencies: governments (at different levels), teachers' unions, parent-teacher committees, civil society in general.

We have gone into some of these issues in a few small reports of the Pratichi Trust - a small Trust that I was privileged to set up in 1999 with the help of my Nobel money, one in India and one in Bangladesh.

The Indian Trust is particularly involved in elementary schooling and elementary health care (the Bangladesh Pratichi Trust has tended to concentrate especially on gender equity, including the training of young women journalists from rural background).

Aside from policy revisions we have suggested, the Indian Trust organizes regular parent-teacher meetings at the state level (so far only in West Bengal though - we are still a small Trust), and we have also started arranging collaborative meetings with the teachers' unions to get their help in making the schools more effective and with greater accountability. The government does, of course, have a huge part to play, but other people and other organizations also have responsibility.

 

All of us believe education system in India is ailing and need serious consideration. What are we doing: blaming government, politicians, some x or some y? What is our contribution? Instead of blaming so and so, we need to work for up gradation of our nation's education.

I am not saying you can bring a drastic change but yes you can make difference in lives of few underprivileged.

Also I don't ask you to scarify your whole life for it. You have your own life and your own problems but I think us all can take at least a few hours a week for this cause instead lazing around.

We all should work for our nation. If we unite and work I am sure we will be ahead of every nation.

So friends let work and make India the future world leader.