The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, mandates the appropriate Government to provide free and compulsory elementary education to every child of the age 6 to 14 years in a neighbourhood school.Education is a subject in the concurrent list of the Constitution and majority of the schools are under the control of the respective State Governments. Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL), Ministry of Education is implementing SamagraShiksha to support States and UTs in implementation of the RTE Act, 2009. Ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels of school education is one of the major objectives of SamagraShiksha. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) shows equitable participation of children belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) in education, which is as under:
GER | All Children | SC Children | ST Children |
Primary | 102.74 | 113.11 | 107.11 |
Upper Primary | 89.67 | 97.07 | 93.48 |
Secondary | 77.90 | 83.02 | 76.72 |
(Source :- UDISE+ 2019-2020)
SamagraShiksha attempts to reach out to girls, and children belonging to SC, ST, Minority communities, etc. SC, ST and minority Special Focus Districts (SFDs) have been identified on the basis of adverse performance on various indicators of enrolment, retention, and gender parity, as well as concentration of SC, ST and minority communities. To ensure equitable education to the most deprived sections of the society,SamagraShiksha has various provisions like free textbooks, uniform, Kasturba Gandhi BalikaVidyalayasfor girls, NetajiSubhas Chandra Bose AwasiyaVidyalayas/Hostels for areas which are sparsely populated with low density of population (mostly tribal areas). These efforts have resulted in increase in transition rate of SC and ST students across all levels of education. The details for last three years are as under:
Transition Rate (Source :- UDISE) | SC | ST | |||||
2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | ||
Primary to Upper Primary | 88.56 | 88.54 | 90.64 | 91.64 | 90.77 | 92.38 | |
Elementary to Secondary | 86.40 | 87.08 | 88.92 | 85.89 | 87.52 | 87.49 | |
Secondary to Higher Secondary | 62.99 | 64.61 | 68.11 | 61.74 | 62.80 | 62.78 | |
A comprehensive initiative called PMeVidya has been started which aims to unify all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. The initiative includes all forms of digital modes to provide wide access - DIKSHA (online), SWAYAM (online), SWAYAM PRABHA (TV), other TV Channels including use of Doordarshan and AIR Networks. Further, PRAGYATA guidelines were issued to States/UTs to facilitate continued education through various modes. The guidelines inter-alia include situations where internet connectivity is not available or available with very less bandwidth, these resources are shared through various platforms like television, radio etc that do not depend on internet. An Alternate Academic Calendar has been prepared for learning solutions for grade 1 to 12 for both children with and without device. Besides these, community radio, worksheets & textbooks supplied to residence of learners, home visits by teachers, community classes, toll free numbers, SMS based requests for audio content, localised radio content for edutainment etc. have been used. The steps taken by all the states and UTs are shown in the India Report Digital Education, June 2020, which is available at the following link:https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/India_Report_Digital_Education_0.pdf
