ALTHOUGH MUCH has been talked by the government agencies for achieving the gender parity and universal enrollment by 2010, it has been revealed that Indian educational region as a United Nations (UN) member is facing a grim literary scenario.
The very recent survey monitored by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) on ’Education for All’ (EFA) in March, 2008 is an eye-opener for the statesmen and policy-makers of the educational system in India.
The global monitoring report 2008 on EFA by the UN body speaks highly of the grim educational affairs of children belonging to the remote and disadvantaged areas of the country.
I mean to focus that besides the launch of national flagship programmes like ’Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ (SSA), India has missed its 2005 target of achieving gender parity and as per the report will miss the target of 2015 for attaining total literacy.
Another matter of concern for policy-makers is that the adult literacy programmes of the government have fallen off its priority list and the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is in the process of finalising its recommendations on this as well.
UNESCO, as a technical support agency made a recent assessment and stressed increased involvement of children to learn by the year 2015 for achieving the vision of EFA.
The organisation highlighted innovative projects and strategies and underscored the urgency of pushing forward a common agenda for action but the question remains: Which educational programmes and policies have been successful? What is the relevance of the programmes at the regional level? Who remained the target beneficiary of the milestones of the government and what should be the decentralised procedure to put the policies into practice?
The current analysis of UN on India’s EFA commended India’s efforts in bringing children back to schools, who are drop-outs by way of the formal or informal means.
The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), with its headquarters at Noida, formed by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development offering academic and vocational training courses, can prove fruitful if every district is made a main centre of decentralisation. This means setting up NIOS centres in every district to reach the unreached.
The SSA, which is being implemented throughout the country, is a major movement to achieve the universal elementary education (UEE).
The educational think-tank, National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), has developed an Educational Development Index (EDI) to track the progress of the states towards UEE.
NUEPA has developed a school report card system of more then 1.05 million primary and upper primary schools. The SSA is a historic stride towards achieving UEE through a time-bound integral approach, in partnership with the states.
Operation Blackboard (OBB) started in 1987 gave impetus to the large scale infrastructural facilities to avoid wastage and stagnation. The EFA report marks the midway in the great zealous movement to expand learning opportunities to every child by 2015.
In this context, the findings of the report causes concern for Indian educational region because it has pledged to put all the children in the 6-14 age group in school by that time and attain over 85 per cent literacy rate.
The report highly endorses the country’s efforts in bringing revolution in distance education by using technological means like EDUSAT and digital learning schemes.
The replacement of more then 10,000 schools into virtual classrooms is a significant achievement.
Besides governmental initiation of the programmes, the efforts are not enough to achieve a big target within the stipulated period, since it is a fact that education especially in government-funded schools remains neglected most of the time. It may be due to the least remuneration of the literacy workers or lack of community intervention.
The successive governments launched several policies and made several declarations on this issue right from the Constitutional Mandate of 1950.
Be it the National Policy on Education 1986, Unnikrishnan Judgment of 1993, Education Ministers Resolve of 1998, National Committees Report on UEE in Mission Mode of 1999 or the Programme of Action of 2001, all promised to change the face of elementary education by 2010, but the gender and social gap seems to have become a part of the country.
As far as the National SSA Project is concerned, the programme remained confined to the educational officers and administrators only and the community was not made familiar of the real object.
The reasons for this are many. Firstly, the SSA failed on the grounds that the programme has not taken care of the community mobilisation in rural and deprived areas and Educationally and Economically Backward Blocks (EEBB).
Secondly, the SSA as a project in mission mode attached the teachers of mainstreaming schools as district zonal and cluster resource persons thereby resulting in the erosion of mainstream classroom. This deployment of the mainstream formal school functionaries in SSA has paralysed the system of both formal and non formal funded projects of the government.
The SSA needs to improve indicators by way of recruiting the staff of its own and can seek healthy collaboration of the formal functionaries of the system vis-à-vis community mobilisation.
The collaboration of SSA with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in some states like Rajasthan is appreciable and proven result oriented. The EFA, being a call for every citizen for learning basic skills at minimum level, should be projected with the intervention of local NGOs and community.
This may help in getting information from the community for the effective decentralisation of the programme. Ironically, the local level community participation in any of the projects is not encouraging, which is the core factor of SSA.
The local level awareness camping and increase of the remuneration of the literacy workers is utmost importance to stem the root. The EFA reports of 2008 demands effective decentralisation. Consequent to several efforts at national and state level by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the country has made good progress by increasing institutions, teachers and students in elementary education.
In January 2008, Arjun Singh, HRD minister released flash statistics. According to the statistics brought out by NUEPA New Delhi, there has been addition of minority enrollment both at primary and upper primary levels of education, which has been attempted for the first time in the country.
The Eklavya schools for tribals in September 2007 by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs for class VI to VIII in different states is also a credit to the mission.
The extension of the mid-day meal scheme from class VI to VII in 3,479 educationally backward blocks in 2007-08 is another feather to its cap.
The efforts are revolutionary at the national level and the government at the top level is keen to achieve the target of EFA by 2015.
The government of India Plan of 2012, in which it has been felt worth that the fund sharing pattern between the Centre and state will be 50:50, under the manifold of SSA.
The constitutional legal and national policies will be upheld and funding pattern of different projects of education should be revised by government to achieve the target.