TO EDUCATE A CHILD

DO WE HAVE A QUALITY

TEACHER?

IMPLEMENTING RTEA IS A HARD TASK

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)

Efforts were made to integrate various facets of ECCE into

services provided by the Anganwadi Centres established

under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

Scheme.

Expansion of institutionalized ECCE services, including

pre-school sections attached to schools, have resulted in

substantial increase in the number of children receiving

pre-school education.

The number of children of age 3 to 5+ years

who received pre-school education under the ICDS

Scheme increased from 16.7 million in 2001-02 to

35.3 million in 2012-13. Available data indicates that

the total enrolment in pre-primary education

programmes has increased from 13.9 million in 1999 to

41.3 million in 2010, with the collaborative efforts of

Government of India and the State/UT Governments,

and through district level decentralized management

structures, involving local bodies.

Education for any person is not only

a tool to enhance his understanding and

knowledge of everything present and

happening around him but is also

an avenue for ensuring an all-round growth

and development of his or her personality

in all respects.

A Right to Quality Education Act is needed now.

Teacher Eligibility Test is meant to check Quality of

candidates for teaching posts.

• Ensuring learning is important.

• Efforts be focused back to RTEA core intent instead of allowing the authorities to impose extraneous conditions on schools.

• Was it true that the low-fee private schools produced higher learning outcomes among children at less than 20 per cent of the per student cost of government schools?

A District Information System for Education (DISE) looks

into several quality related parameters like student-

classroom ratio, teacher-pupil ratio, teachers’ profiles and

examination results.

In addition, Government of India, with the help of NCERT,

has operationalised a quarterly monitoring system in the

form of Quality Monitoring Tools (QMTs) to monitor quality

aspects such as student attendance, teacher availability in

schools, classroom practices, student learning

achievement, academic supervision

DISE data show that between 2010 and 2014,

total enrollment in government elementary

schools fell by 1.16 crore students while total

enrollment in private school increased by1.85

crore students.

In 2014-15, there were nearly 97,000

government schools in India with a total

enrolment of 20 or fewer students. Is it true?

Ecosystem creation for greater private involvement

needed. Finally, along with ensuring implementation of the

RTE Act which stipulates

focused reforms in government schools and regulation

for private schools, we need

to broaden our vision so as to create an ecosystem

conducive to spontaneous private involvement.

Do the current licensing and regulatory restrictions in

the education sector discourage well-intentioned

`edupreneurs’ from opening more schools?

Free and compulsory education to all children is now a

Fundamental Right in India . It is also the focus of the World

Declaration on ‘Education for All’, adopted nearly 25 years

ago. The World Education Forum, in 2000, reiterated the

commitment of the global community and approved a set of

goals in the areas of early childhood care in education,

primary education, gender, youth and adolescent, adult

education. India prepared a National Plan of Education

(2002) delineating various programmes and strategies for

achieving various Education for All (EFA) Goals.

India prepared a National Plan of Education (2002) with

programmes and strategies for achieving Education for All

(EFA) Goals. The mid- term assessment of progress of EFA

goals, undertaken in 2005, underscored the concern for

equity and inclusion. India, undoubtedly, has made

substantial progress towards achieving EFA goals during

the last two decades. Adoption of Right of Children to

Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), 2009 has given

further impetus to the national efforts for ensuring quality

education for all in a time- bound manner.

Universal Elementary Education

• Programme for universalisation of primary

education is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).

• The overall goals of the SSA are: (i) all children

in schools; (ii) bridging all gender and social

category gaps at primary and upper primary

stages of education (iii) universal retention; and

(iv) elementary education of satisfactory quality.

The RTE Act confers a permanent right to free and

compulsory education of equitable quality on the children

of India. It is, therefore, necessary to put in place systems

and mechanisms for a shift from the SSA project-based

approach to RTE. An appropriate governance structure

for RTE must naturally follow from the imperatives of

implementation of the various provisions of the Act and

take into account the strengths and weaknesses of SSA.

All children in the neighborhood, be enrolled and attending

school regularly.

Progress towards universal retention: Data relating to

drop-out rates indicate that during the period 2000-01 to

2008-09, the over-all drop-out rate for Classes I-V declined

by 15.8 percentage points. The drop-out rate for Classes I-

VIII has declined by 11.4 percentage points during this

period. There has been a steady decline in dropout rates in

primary education since 2009-10. Between 2009-10 and

2012-13, the annual average drop-out rate in primary

education declined from 9.1 per cent to 4.7 per cent.

As per U DISE 2013-14 a total of 2.44 lakhs schools still

do not have toilet facilities. The PM gave a call for

education of girls and made a commitment to the Nation

that every school will have toilet within one year with a

separate girls’ toilet, so that girls are not compelled to

leave the schools mid way. He also gave a call to the

Parliamentarians to use their MPLAD fund for construction

of toilets. He called upon the corporate sector to use their

corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds this National

endeavour.

Progress towards universal retention.

• The dropout rate, though declining from year to year,

still remains a major challenge.

• The transition rate (from primary to upper primary

stage) increased from 81.1 per cent in 2007-08 to

89.6 per cent in 2012-13.

• The youth literacy rate has increased from 76.43 per

cent to 86.14 per cent during the period 2001-2011.

In keeping with the rights based approach,

to ensure universal access, improve attendance and

reduce dropout existing interventions under SSA are

modified, especially with reference to

Children belonging to Scheduled castes,

Scheduled tribes,

Muslim minority and

Urban deprived.

New interventions are made to

(i) provide pre-school education to ensure school

readiness for all children, and

(ii) reimbursement to private unaided schools for

admission of 25% children from disadvantaged groups

and weaker sections, as also

(iii) provision of textbooks and uniforms to these children

in order to facilitate their participation in the learning

process.

After RTE it is mandatory that only those people

may be appointed as teachers who are able to

clear Teacher Eligibility Test (TET).

CBSE has conducted six rounds of Teacher

Eligibility Tests (TETs) and 30 States have also

conducted the TET. Apart from these 2.43 lakh

part-time instructors have also been sanctioned

under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).

There are approximately 45 lakh teacher positions in

government, local body and aided schools across India,

against which 18.89 lakh are sanctioned under SSA. This

includes --- lakh posts sanctioned under SSA since RTE

Act became operative. However, there are a large number

of posts vacant, including vacancies in the State sector

and the newly sanctioned posts under SSA. Within states

and districts there are large variations, and the situation of

vacancies is particularly acute in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,

Jharkhand and West Bengal.

North Karnataka districts to face acute

shortage of teachers.

• March, 2016. While 2.94 lakh aspirants applied for

Karnataka Teachers’ Eligibility Test (KarTET), only

9,963 managed to clear it and qualify for the

Common Entrance Test.

• Government primary schools across the State are

unlikely to get any relief from the acute teacher

shortage they are facing.

Expansion of skill development opportunities:

Under the National Skill Development Policy 2009, the target for

skill training of 500 million people by the year 2022 has been set by

the Government of India. Out of this target, about 50 million people

are expected to be skilled through programmes within the education

sector.

During the year 2013-14, a total of 955,000 people were covered

under vocational education and skilling programmes.

The National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) was notified in

December 2013 by the National Skill Development Authority.