15 Administration and Management of Centrally Sponsored Programmes and Schemes for the Improvement of School Education: A Critical Analysis

Ms. Navdeep Saini

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Learning outcomes

3. Centrally Sponsored Programme

3.1 Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)

3.2 The National Programme of Mid-Day Meal (MDM) in Schools,

3.3 The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)

3.4 The Saakshar Bharat programme.

4. Seven more centrally-sponsored schemes for the improvement of school

    education

5. Conclusion

1.  Introduction

In order to promote better coordination of initiatives relating to school education and literacy, a separate Department of School Education and Literacy was created in 1999 within the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. Four of the major flagship programmes of the Government of India are:

1. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
2. The National Programme of Mid-Day Meal (MDM) in Schools,
3. The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)
4. The Saakshar Bharat programme.

2.  Learning Outcomes

After going through this content the learner will be able to:

1. Explain the various programmes and schemes sponsored by the central government for the improvement of school education.
2. Evaluate the importance of centrally sponsored programmes and schemes for the improvement of Elementary Education.
3. Correlate the relevance of centrally sponsored programmes and schemes for the improvement of Secondary Education.
4. Analyse critically various centrally sponsored programmes and schemes for the improvement of school education.

3.  Centrally Sponsored Programmes

The various programmes run by the central government are discussed further:

This is a principal programme for universalisation of primary education. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a Centrally-sponsored scheme being implemented in partnership with State and Union Territory Governments. The programme has been in operation since 2000-01. The overall goals of the SSA are:

1.  All children in school
2. Bridge all gender and social category gaps at primary and upper primary stages of education
3. Universal retention and
4. Elementary education of satisfactory quality.

The SSA is the primary vehicle for implementing the aims and objectives of the RTE

3.2. National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools (NP-MDMS): With a view to enhance enrolment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improving nutritional levels among primary school children, the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education was launched in August 1995. During 2008-09, the Scheme was extended to cover children in upper primary classes and the Scheme was renamed as ‘National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools’. The programme aims at the following:

1.  Improving the nutritional status of children in Classes I-VIII,
2. Encouraging poor children, belonging to disadvantaged sections to attend schools more regularly
3. Helping them to concentrate on classroom activities, and
4. Providing nutritional support to children at elementary stage of education in drought-affected areas during summer vacation.

The National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools is now covering all children studying in Classes I-VIII in Government, Government-aided, Local Body schools, National Child Labour Projects schools, Madarsas and Maktabs under SSA.

3.3. Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA): This scheme was launched in March 2009 with the objective of making secondary education of good quality available, accessible and affordable to all young persons in the age group 14-15 years. The scheme visualizes to enhance enrolment in Classes IX-X by providing a secondary school within a reasonable distance of every habitation to enable universal access to secondary education by 2017 and universal retention by 2020; improving the quality of education by making all schools conform to prescribed norms; and removing gender, socio-economic and disability barriers.

3.4. Saakshar Bharat’ Mission (2009 onwards): In the context of Government’s overall policy aimed at empowerment of women and in recognition of the fact that female literacy is a force multiplier in all actions for social development, the National Literacy Mission (NLM) was recast with renewed focus on female literacy and its new variant, Saakshar Bharat (Literate India), was launched in September 2009 as India’s National Literacy Mission. The Saakshar Bharat Mission envisions a “fully literate society through improved q uality and standard of adult education and literacy”. The main goals of the Mission, to be achieved by 2017, are: raising literacy levels to 80 per cent (from 73 per cent in 2011), reducing gender gap in literacy rate to 10 percentage points (from over 16 percentage points in 2011), and bridging urban-rural and social group disparities in literacy level.These programmes are administered by the Department of School Education and Literacy, MHRD in collaboration with the State governments.

4. Some more centrally-sponsored schemes for the improvement of school education

The Department oversees some more centrally- sponsored schemes for the improvement of school education. These include:

1. Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madarsas.
2. Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage.
3. Mahila Samakhya Programme.
4. Information and Communication Technology in Schools.
5. Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutions.
6. Vocational Education in Secondary Schools.
7. National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education.
8. National Means Cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme.

As shown in the figure these include:

4.1 Scheme for Providing Quality Education for Madarsas (SPQEM): The framework for implementation of SSA acknowledges the importance of interventions to promote education of children belonging to Muslim communities. As a part of the effort to bring about qualitative improvement in Madarsas to enable Muslim children to attain standards of the national education system in formal education subject areas of study, a Scheme for Providing Quality Education for Madarsas (SPQEM) is under implementation. The main features of the scheme are;

1. Strengthening capacities in Madarsas for teaching of the formal education subjects of study like science, mathematics, language, social studies;
2. Training of teachers every two years in new innovative practices
3. Providing science/mathematics kits in primary/upper primary level madarsas,
4. Strengthening of libraries/book banks and providing teaching- learning materials to madarsas, and
5. Encouraging linkages of madarsas with the National Institute for Open Schooling (NIOS) as accredited centres for providing formal education which will enable children studying in such madarsas to get certification for Classes V, VIII, X and XII.The table gives the factual information about the number of Madarsas in different states and the total numbers of Madarsas in all over India.

Table 1: Madarsas in different states of India

S.NO.	NAME OF THE STATE	NO.OF MADARSAS
1.	Andhra Pradesh	40
2.	Chhattisgarh	308
3.	Haryana	7
4.	Kerala	1462
5.	Madhya Pradesh	1743
6.	Maharashtra	98
7.	Rajasthan	209
8	Tripura	129
9.	Uttar Pradesh	10704
10.	Uttarakhand	159
	Total	14859

4.2 Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage: Under the SSA, the focus of the education programme for children with special needs has been on mainstreaming children with special needs (CWSN) in regular schools and supporting their participation in the schooling process. The main components of the interventions for children with special needs include:

(i) Identification, functional and formal assessment, appropriate educational placement, preparation of Individualized Educational Plan, provision of aids and appliances, teacher training, appointment of resource teachers and therapists establishing resource rooms to provide specialized support to children with disabilities, and provision of ramps, handrails and disabled- friendly toilets, monitoring and evaluation and a special focus on girls with specia l needs;

   (ii) Special training for children with special needs with a view to preparing them for schools and promoting their effective inclusion in elementary education;

(iii) Home-based education for children with severe and profound disabilities with the objective of preparing children with special needs for schools and for life by imparting to them basic life skills;

(iv) Financial support for integration of children with special needs, as per specific proposal. These provisions have resulted in increased identification and enrolment of CWSN. Progress achieved includes the following:

a) The enrolment of CWSN has gone up from 1.17 million in 2003-04 to 2.35 million (86.45 per cent of CWSN identified) in 2013-14. In addition, 33,900 CWSN are enrolled in school readiness programmes and 206,000 children were provided home-based education. The total coverage of CWSN is 2.6 million, which is 95.3 per cent of the total number of CWSN identified.

b) During the year 2013-14, 52,733 CWSN have been provided corrective surgeries, 156,000 CWSN have been given transport and escort support and 259,000 CWSN have been provided therapeutic assistance. Around 80.6 per cent of CWSN have been provided with assistive devices. In addition to this, 21,646 resource persons have been appointed to provide on-site support to teachers in teaching CWSN.

c) Besides, CWSN are also provided with free text books, Braille & large print books for visually challenged, free uniforms, mid-day meal, special training and age appropriate admissions. A major challenge in inclusive education is to ensure that as far as possible; every child with special needs is mainstreamed and provided the needed resource support. In pursuance to this objective and with the view to enrich academic assistance to CWSN, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has developed exemplar materials on inclusive pedagogy and practices with the key objective of enhancing the skills of regular teachers on handling CWSN in a mainstream classroom so that teachers could extend need-based academic support to CWSN.

4.3 The Mahila Samakhya (MS): This programme was started in 1989 for the education and empowerment of women in rural areas, particularly those from the socially and economically marginalized groups. The main focus of the programmatic interventions under the MS programme has been on developing capacities of poor women to address gender and social barriers to education and for the realisation of women’s rights at the family and community levels. The core activities of the MS programme are centred on issues of health, education of women and girls, accessing public services, addressing issues of violence and social practices, which discriminate against women and girls, gaining entry into local governance and seeking sustainable livelihoods. The programme involves the formation of women’s collectives or Mahila Sanghas at the village level by women facilitators (sahayoginis) for mobilizing women. The MS programme activities involve dissemination of information, awareness-building and facilitating collective actions on core themes and development of supportive structures such as Mahila Shikshan Kendras for the education of older girls and young women who have been never enrolled or have dropped out of school. The Mahila Shikshan Kendras provide condensed courses and create a cadre of educated women in backward regions. These Kendras provide condensed quality and gender sensitive education to adolescent girls who have never gone to school, school drop-outs among girls, and adult women. The MS programme also involves setting up of Nari Adalats (women’s courts) for addressing issues such as violence against women, among others. During the year 2012-13, the MS programme was implemented in 121 districts (563 Blocks) in ten States (Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. A total of 47,073 village level women’s collectives (Mahila Sanghas) have been formed with a membership of 1.23 million women from 36,792 villages. The Sanghas have been further organized into

➢   248 federations of which 77 are  fully autonomous. Concurrently, 20,048

Kishori Sanghas (girls’ collectives) have been formed with a membership of 453,800 girls. The Kishori sanghas are the sites where adolescent girl’s issues and life skills are addressed. The Kishori sangha has emerged as an effective means of reaching older out-of-schools girls and of bringing girls into the mainstream of education. Over 15,000 women are represented in Panchayats as elected representatives. The Sanghas and federations are involved in the implementation of the Right to Education Act. The evaluation of the MS programme has acknowledged Mahila Samakhya as a unique process-oriented programme which has demonstrated ways of empowering rural, poor and marginalised women and thereby enabling their effective participation in the public domain and in educational and learning processes.

➢   Use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools: The use of information and communication technology to complement and supplement classroom teaching and learning is pursued as an important strategy for fostering quality education at elementary and secondary stages of education. Both under SSA and RMSA, States have been assisted to provide computer hardware and related facilities. These facilities would also be leveraged to provide online course content and related materials to students. Key activities include providing computer equipment or labs to schools, development of curriculum based e- learning materials in local languages, and training of teachers in computer use. In order to provide opportunities to secondary school students to build their capacity on ICT skills and make computer-enabled learning a reality, a Centrally-sponsored Scheme of “Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Schools” was launched in 2004. The Scheme was revised in 2010. The main components of the revised Scheme include:

(i) partnership with State Governments and Union Territory Administrations for providing computer-aided education in Government and Government-aided secondary and higher secondary schools;

(ii) establishment of 150 smart schools to act as ‘technology demonstrators’;

(iii) teacher-related interventions, such as provision for engagement of an exclusive teacher, capacity enhancement of all teachers in ICT and a scheme for national ICT award as a mea ns of motivation; and

(iv) development of e-content. Under the Scheme Financial assistance is provided for procurement of computers and peripherals, educational software, training of teachers, development of e-content, Internet connectivity and setting up of smart schools. Out of the total target of 183,648 Government and Government-aided secondary and higher secondary schools under the Scheme, around 97,000 schools have been covered by the end of academic year 2013-14. Out of the target of setting up of 150 smart schools, 63 smart schools have so far been approved in 12 States and three Union Territories under the Scheme.

4.3 Scheme for Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutes (IDMI): The up gradation of infrastructure like additional classrooms, science laboratories, lab equipment, computer room, libraries, art/craft/culture room, drinking water provisions and hostels for teachers in remote areas, separate toilets for girls and boys, boundary wall for the school, laboratories etc. has been helpful in increasing the enrolment rates of students in these institute

Table 2: Financial and Physical Progress under IDMI (Rs. in Lakh)

S.No.	States	2014-15 (till 31.08.14)	2014-15 (till 31.08.14)
		No. of Institutes	Amount
1	Gujarat
2	Haryana	6	11.08
3	Jammu & kashmir
4	Karnataka	5	66.84
5	Kerala
6	Madhya pradesh	4	32.11
7	Maharashtra	27	394.03
8	Rajasthan
9	Uttarakhand	3	15.02
10	Sikkim
11	Mizoram
12	Assam
13	Tamil Nadu	1	4.88
14	Uttar Pradesh
	Total	46	523.96

4.4 National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education

Under the Centrally sponsored scheme, “National Scheme of Incentive to Girls for Secondary Education” Rs 3,000/- is deposited in the name of an unmarried girl below 16 years as fixed deposit, which she is entitled to withdraw along with interest upon reaching 18 years of age and after having passed class 10. The scheme covers

(i) all girls belonging to SC/ST communities, who pass class eight and (ii) all girls who pass class eight from Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) and enroll in class IX in either Government, Government-aided or local body schools. Till 2013, 1571019 girls have benefitted since the launch of the scheme in 2008-09 involving an expenditure of Rs.471.13 crore approx. More than 98% of the benefitted girls belong to SC and ST communities.

Table 3: Year wise breakup of funds released and number of beneficiary girls

Year	Funds   sanctioned (in crores)	No.of beneficiary girls	No.   of   beneficiary  states/UTs
2008-09	96.52	321724	17
2009-10	45.80	152660	14
2010-11	72.46	241528	15
2011-12	163.06	543532	25
2012-13	93.74	3212457	19

4.5 Vocationalisation of Secondary Education

The Centrally-sponsored Scheme of “Vocationalisation of Secondary Education” was launched in 1988, to be implemented at the higher secondary stage of education (Classes XI-XII). The Scheme envisaged selection of vocational courses on the basis of assessment of needs of human resources. The main objectives of the scheme, as spelt out in the National Policy on Education 1986, were to provide diversification of educational opportunities so as to enhance individual employability, reduce the mismatch between demand and supply of skilled manpower and to provide an alternative for those pursuing higher education. Vocational education was made a distinct stream intended to prepare students for identified occupations spanning several areas of activities. About 150 vocational courses of two years’ duration in the broad areas of agriculture, business and commerce, engineering and technology, health and paramedical, home science and science and technology are offered at the higher secondary stage. A review of the Scheme of “Vocationalisation of Secondary Education” undertaken by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, had brought to focus several weaknesses of the Scheme. The weaknesses in the scheme included the lack of provision for vertical and horizontal mobility of students in vocational stream, grossly inadequate linkage of schools with industry, paucity of trained teachers, low quality teaching- learning material, absence of constant updation of curriculum and course content not in tune with the requirement of industry. A revised Scheme of Vocationalisation of higher Secondary Education” was put in operation in 2011 to address some of the weaknesses in the earlier scheme. The components of the Scheme includes establishment of new vocational schools, strengthening existing vocational schools, assistance to vocational schools under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode, in-service training for existing vocational education teachers, induction training of 30 days duration for new vocational education teachers, development of competency-based modules for each individual vocational course, assistance to reputed NGOs to run short duration innovative vocational education programmes, pilot projects for Class IX in some selected States, and establishment of a Vocational Education Cell within the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The revised vocational education programmes propose to integrate the general academic education, vocational education, vocational training and higher education as a comprehensive system under the National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF). The NVEQF represents a nationally integrated education and competency-based skill framework that would provide for multiple pathways both within vocational education and between general and vocational education to link one level of learning to another higher level and enable learners to progress to higher levels from any starting point in education or skill system. The key elements of the NVEQF are to provide national  principles for providing vocational education leading to international equivalency; multiple entry and exit between vocational education, general education and job markets; progression within vocational education; transfer between vocational education and general education; and partnership with industry/emp loyers. A pilot project, based on the NVEQ, was launched in Haryana State in 40 schools in 2012. The project has shown good results in terms of linkages established with industry for determining standards, curriculum, teacher training, and assessment by State School Boards and the placements in jobs. The pilot covers four sectors of information technology, security, retail and automobile, for which industry provided the job roles and national occupational standards. Based on the experience gained, the scheme was approved for implementation in seven more States. These States are Andhra Pradesh (46 schools), Assam (60 schools), Himachal Pradesh (100 schools), Karnataka (250 schools), Sikkim (40 schools), Uttar Pradesh (100 schools) and West Bengal (93 schools). Based on the encouraging experience gained through the implementation of the pilot project in Haryana, it is felt that the vocational education scheme needs further revision to incentivize more and more schools to take up vocational education in Class IX and to include components for systematic coordination with industry.

4.6 National Means Cum-Merit Scholarship Sche me (NMMSS)

The Centrally Sponsored Scheme “National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme (NMMSS)” was launched in May, 2008.The figure given below depicts status of the scheme through various years.

Table 4: Year wise break up of scholarships awarded

Year	Scholarships
2010-11	81377
2011-12	103033
2012-13	102816
2010-11	81377
2011-12	103033
2012-13	102816
2008-09	55544
2009-10	78926

     The objective of the scheme is to award scholarships to meritorious students of economically weaker sections to arrest their dropout at class VIII and encourage them to continue their study at secondary stage. Scholarship of Rs. 6000/- per annum (Rs.500/- per month) per student is awarded to selected students every year for study in classes from IX to XII in State Government, Government aided and local body schools. There is quota of scholarships for different states/UTs. Students whose parental income from all sources is not more than Rs. 1,50,000/- are eligible to avail the scholarships. There is reservation as per State Government norms. The selection of students for award of the scholarships is made through an examination conducted by the State Governments. The State bank of India is the implementing agency for the scheme. Scholarships are disbursed by the State Bank of India directly into the bank accounts of students by electronic transfer into the account of the students on quarterly basis. The students studying in “Kendriya Vidyalayas and “Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas” are not entitled to get scholarship under this scheme. Similarly, those students studying in Residential Schools run by the State Government Institutions, where facilities like boarding, lodging and education are provided and students studying in private schools are also not eligible for the scholarship under this scheme.The scheme is continued in XII Plan to award one lakh scholarships each year at class 9t h stage and for subsequent continuation of scholarships.

Summary

India has made significant progress towards the goal of Education for All during the past few years. Keeping in view the pace of progress achieved till 2000, several programmes have been formulated and implemented since 2001 to advance the goal of Education for All. These policies and programmes have been implemented through the collaborative efforts of Government of India and the State/UT Governments, and through district level decentralized management structures, involving local bodies.

    References

• http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/css/annexe4.pdf
• http://mla.prsindia.org/sites/default/files/policy_guide/Centrally%20

    Web links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrally_Sponsored_Scheme
• http://www.financialexpress.com/article/economy/centrally -sponsored-sch
• http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=116152
• http://mhrd.gov.in/scheme