* All Children in school, Education Guarantee Centre, Alternate School,
'Back-to-School' camp by 2003.
* All Children complete
five years of primary schooling by 2007.
* All Children complete
eight years of elementary schooling by 2010.
* Focus on elementary
education of satisfactory quality with emphasis on education for life.
* Bridge all gender
and social category gaps at primary stage by 2007 and at elementary
education level by 2010.
* Universal retention by
2010.
Focus Areas
Alternative
Schooling
Children with
special needs
Community
mobilization
Girls Education
Quality of
Elementary Education
Institutional
Reforms - As part of the SSA, the Central and the governments will
undertake reforms in order to improve efficiency of the delivery system.
The States will have to make an objective assessment of their prevalent
education system including educational administration, achievement levels
in schools, financial issues, decentralisation and community ownership,
review of State Education Act, rationalization of teacher deployment and
recruitment of teachers, monitoring and evaluation, status of education of
girls, SC/ST and disadvantaged groups, policy regarding private schools and
ECCE. Many States have already carried out several changes to improve the
delivery system for elementary education.
Sustainable
Financing - The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is based on the premise that
financing of elementary education interventions has to be sustainable. This
calls for a long-term perspective on financial partnership between the
Central and the State governments.
Community Ownership - The
programme calls for community ownership of school-based interventions
through effective decentralisation. This will be augmented by involvement
of women's group, VEC members and members of Panchayati Raj institutions.
Institutional Capacity Building
- The SSA conceives a major capacity building role for national, state and
district level institutions like NIEPA/NCERT/NCTE/ SCERT/ SIEMAT/DIET.
Improvement in quality requires a sustainable support system of resource
persons and institutions.
Improving Mainstream
Educational Administration - It calls for improvement of mainstream
educational administration by institutional development, infusion of new
approaches and by adoption of cost effective and efficient methods.
Community Based Monitoring with
Full Transparency - The Programme will have a community based monitoring
system. The Educational Management Information System (EMIS) will correlate
school level data with community-based information from micro planning and
surveys. Besides this, every school will be encouraged to share all
information with the community, including grants receive. A notice board
would be put up in every school for this purpose.
Habitation as a Unit of
Planning - The SSA works on community based approach to planning with habitation
as a unit of planning. Habitation plans will be the basis for formulating
district plans.
Accountability to Community -
SSA envisages cooperation between teachers, parents and PRIs, as well as
accountability and transparency to the community.
Priority to Education of Girls
- Education of girls, especially those belonging to the scheduled castes,
scheduled tribes and minorities, will be one of the principal concerns in
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
Focus on Special Groups - There
will be a focus on the inclusion and participation of children from SC/ST,
minority groups, urban deprived children, children of other disadvantaged
groups and children with special needs, in the educational process.
Pre-Project Phase - SSA will
commence throughout the country with a well-planned pre-project phase that
provides for a large number of interventions for capacity development to
improve the delivery and monitoring system. These include provision for
household surveys, community-based microplanning and school mapping,
training of community leaders, school level activities, support for setting
up information system, office equipment, diagnostic studies, etc.
Thrust on Quality - SSA lays a
special thrust on making education at the elementary level useful and
relevant for children by improving the curriculum, child-centered
activities and effective teaching learning strategies.
Role of teachers - SSA
recognized the critical and central role of teachers and advocates a focus
on their development needs, Setting up of Block Resource Centres/Cluster
Resource Centres, recruitment of qualified teachers, opportunities for
teacher development through participation in curriculum-related material
development, focus on classroom process and exposure visits for teachers
are all designed to develop the human resource among teachers.
District Elementary Education
Plans - As per the SSA framework, each district will prepare a District
Elementary Education Plan reflecting all the investment being made and
required in the elementary education sector, with a holistic and convergent
approach. There will be a Perspective Plan that will give a framework of
activities over a longer time frame to achieve UEE. There will also be an
Annual Work Plan and Budget that will list the prioritized activities to be
carried out in that year. The Perspective Plan will also be a dynamic
document subject to constant improvement in the course of programme
implementation.
* The assistance
under the programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will be on a 85:15 sharing
arrange3ment during the IX Plan, 75:25 sharing arrangement during the X
Plan, and 50:50 sharing thereafter between the Central government and state
governments.
* The State governments
will have to maintain their level of investment in elementary education as
in 1999-2000. The contribution as state share for SSA will be over and
above this investment.
NOTES COMPILED BY : NEHA GUPTA
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