Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is a historic stride towards achieving the long cherished goal of Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) through a time bound integrated approach, in partnership with State. SSA, which promises to change the face of the elementary education sector of the country, aims to provide useful and quality elementary education to all children in the 6 -14 age group by 2010.
The SSA is an effort to recognize the need for improving the performance of the school system and to provide community owned quality elementary education in mission mode. It also envisages bridging of gender and social gaps.
Objectives: SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN
¨ All children in school, Education Guarantee Centre, Alternate School
¨ All children complete five years of primary schooling by 2007;
¨ All children complete eight years of 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 educaiton level by 2010;
¨ Universal retention by 2010.
The Central and Slate governments will together implement the SA in partnership with the local governments and .the community. To signify the national priority for elementary education, a National Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Mission is being established with the Prime Minister as the Chairperson and the Union Minister of Human Resource Development as the Vice Chairperson. States have been requested to establish State level Implementation Society for DEE under the Chairmanship of Chief Minister Education Minister. This has already been done in many States.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will not disturb existing structures in States and districts but would only try to bring convergence in all these efforts. Efforts will be made to ensure that there is functional decentralization down to the school level in order to improve community participation. Besides recognizing PRIs/ Tribal Councils in Scheduled Areas/ including the Gram Sabha, the States would be encouraged to enlarge the accountability framework by involving NGOs/ teachers, activists/ women's organizations etc.
The SSA will cover the entire expanse of the country before March 2002 and the duration of the programme in every district will depend upon the District Elementary Education Plan ( DEEP) prepared by it as per its specific needs. However, the upper limit for the programme period has been fixed as ten-years/ i.e./ up to 2010.
Strategies Central to SSA programme
- Institutional reforms- As part of the SSA, institutional reforms in the States will be carried out. The states will liave to make an objective assessment of their prevalent education system including educational adminstration, 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, education of girls, SC/ST and disadvantaged groups, policy regarding private schools and ECCE. Many States have already effected insitutional reforms 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 tlic Central and the State governments.
- Community ownership - The programme calls for community ownership of school based interventions through effective decentralisation. This null be augmented by involvement of women's groups, VEC members and members of Pancliayati Raj institutions.
- Institutional capacity building -The SSA conceives a major capacity building role for national and state level-institutions like NIEPA/NCERT/NCTE/SCERT/S1EMAT. Improvement in quality requires a sustainable support system of resource persons.
- 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 full 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 have a notice board showing all the grants received by the school and other details.
- Habitation as a unit of planning -The SSA works on a 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.
- Education of girls - Education of girls, especially those belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, will be one of the principal concerns in SarvaShiksha Abhiyan.
- Focus on special groups - There will be a focus on the educational participation of children from SC/ST, religious and linguistic minorities disadvantaged groups and the disabled children.
- 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.
- Thrust on quality - SSA lays a special ilirust on making education at elementary level useful and relevant for children by improving tlie curriculum, cliilil centredactivities mid effective tcaclnng mctliods.
- Role of teachers - SSA recognizes tlic critical role of teadiers and advocates a focus on their development needs. Setting up of BRC/CRC, recruitment of qualifiedteadiers, oportunities for teacher development through tlirougfiparticiaption in curriculum rel;ated material developmetn, focus on classroom procescs and exposurevistis for icndiers nir ill! designed to develop tlie human resource among teadiers.
- District Elementary Education Plans - As per the SSA framework, endl (lislrici will prepare a District Elementary Education Plan reflecting all the investments being made in Hie cleiiieiilnry education seclor, zuilli n lioHslic and convergent uppi-ondi.
The components of Sarva Sluksha Abhiyan includes appointment of teachers, teacher training, qualitative improvement of elementary cducatin, provision of teaching learning materials, establishment of Block and Cluster Resource Centres for academic support, construction of Classrooms and school buildings, establishment of education guarantee centres, integrated education of the disabled and distance education.
According to broad assessments made by the Department of Elementary Education & Literacy, nearly Rs. 60,000 crores additional resources are required from the budget of the Central and the State level Departments over the next ten years. Since SSA is a programme for universalisation of elementary education, the actual requirement of funds can only be worked out after the District Elementary Education Plans are finalized. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has two aspects - 1) It provides a wide convergent framework for implementation of Elementary Education schemes; II) It is also a programme with budget provision for strengthening vital areas to achieve universalisation of elementary education. While all investments in the elementary education sector from the State and the Central Plans will reflect as part of the SSA framework, they will all merge into the SSA programme within the next few years. As a programme, it reflects the additional resource provision for UEE.
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