IT for Implementation of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
1. OVERVIEW: SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is centralized focused step taken by Central Government to universalize education in general by community-ownership of the school system. It is a response to the global demand for superior quality of human resource, services and other products as basic deliverable that India can offer meaningfully while being able to face international competition. The SSA program is also an attempt to provide an opportunity for improving human capabilities to all children, through provision of community-owned quality education in a mission mode.
1.1 WHAT IS SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN
- A program with a clear time frame for universal elementary education.
- Ability to measure the quality and success of the education being imparted
- An opportunity for promoting Government’s social obligation to population deserving basic human justice in addition to basic education.
- An effort at effectively involving the Panchayati Raj Institutions, School Management Committees, Village and Urban Slum level Education Committees, Parents' Teachers' Associations, Mother Teacher Associations, Tribal Autonomous Councils and other grass root level structures in the management of elementary schools.
- A partnership between the Central, State and the local government.
- An opportunity for States to develop their own vision of elementary education
1.2 OBJECTIVES OF SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is to provide useful and relevant elementary education for all children in the 6 to 14 age group by 2010. It is also to Improve and -reduce the gaps within education system existing due to social, regional and gender divides.
§ Gathering the relevant data and analyzing the same, taking corrective measures to improve All children in school, Education Guarantee Centre, Alternate School, ' Back-to-School' camp by 2003; (Was planned)
§ All children complete five years of primary schooling by 2007 (Partially achieved by some of the States)
§ 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 .(Statistics showing improvement)
§ Universal retention by 2010
- Ensure Enrollment of 1. SC/ST possible student population 2. Female possible student Population 3. Female Adult illiterate possible Population 4. Rest of the possible student population 5. Also provide Attention to special children and their needs and 6. Reduce Drop out rate.
1.3 SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN AS A FRAMEWORK AND AS A PROGRAMME
As a part of this drive Government has allocated certain budget for all the states and Central Territories
In addition various other educational programs which have been functional in recent past are too targeting the sometimes same sometimes exclusive population. For eg.
- Mahila Samakhya : Education ,literacy program meant for adult women
- Kasturba Gandhi Bal Vikas : Education program targeted towards female population
- Special program targeted towards SC/ST population of the state
- National Program for Education for Girls (Special focus on Elementary Level)
1.4 IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES
The funding pattern becomes more complex as multiple programs target population partially covered by other programs and partially exclusive. Also funding organizations differ from program to program.Funding Organization can be mainly Central Govt, State Govt , UN Funded schemes/programs, NGOs. Each of the funding organization too has its own objectives and key result areas. While overall aim is same, their objective and key result areas may not exactly match with those of SSA.At the same time implementation bodies can be Panchayati Raj Institutions, School Management Committees, Village and Urban Slum level Education Committees, Parents' Teachers' Associations, Mother Teacher Associations, Tribal Autonomous Councils and other grass root level structures in the management of elementary schools. Keeping this in mind, for the success of SSA and individual programs under SSA umbrella, the Apex monitoring body at State level needs to track closely all the Key result areas and key performance indicators, to be able to review and revise the implementation plan continuously, while ensuring the optimal funds distribution. This is possible only with the help of Excellent, well tested, well proven IT Backbone and infrastructure.
1.5 IT BACKBONE
Hence SSA framework demands an excellent IT infrastructure to be in place to ensure. Funds are used optimally to cover entire Deserving population and each deserving individual is addressed and covered by appropriate program, funding body and implementation body.
Some of the key features of the IT solution being implemented are as follows
- Trends in drop out pattern, category of female student and tracking the reasons for the same
- Patterns in SC/ST student population
- Ability to detect never enrolled population ,to track reasons of dropping out, re-enrollments
- Co-relating parameters to detect patterns (eg. Funds allocated v/s drop outs, Funds spent v/s status of the project.)
- Capability of providing snap shot of student registration at any point in time at various levels
(eg. Village, Panchayat, Block etc…)
- Maintaining 7 level hierarchy through out the system.(eg. School, Village, Panchayat, Cluster, Block, District, State)
- Funds usage, management per project in addition to project status tracking
- Prevent intentional or unintentional misuse of funds.
The same data and application can be used for tracking(As a part of second phase of automation). 1.Health of the students 2. Immunization records 3. Mid Day meal schemes
The objective of SSA is to track student population within the age group of 6 to 14, the system has been extended to account children enrolled in Balwatikas at the age of 3 . Also the students/children (Once registered in the system) will be tracked till the age of 18 years.
As one can see this is probably the first effort of creating comprehensive digitized data for the children population. This data can be repurposed for any other function in future.
The same data can be used very effectively by HRD and Welfare ministry to analyze and make the decisions regarding future schemes and programs and their Funds Allocation.
Once the data is stabilized over the first year of implementation Business Intelligence tools can drill down the data further to provide effective reporting that can help top government officials for speedy, effective and accurate decision making.
Refer to the diagram below, that represents the data maintenance and retrieval at various levels.
As one can see the data can be used fruitfully by many other government Departments for various purposes. The data can be repurposed and reformatted very effectively to get international grants in the areas which we have not been targeting so far.
The database can be extended in future to track the population beyond 18th years to analyze their earning and employment patterns to plan their careers effectively. The data can help employment exchanges and in general many employment guarantee schemes which can be targeted much better. Also the data related to segment/sector/skills wise manpower availability can be used further to mobilize the human resource effectively for higher GDP/GNP growth.
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