The right to education

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a national flagship programme, is being implemented in all districts of the country. The aim of SSA is to provide useful and relevant elementary education for all children in the 6-14 age groups. SSA is being implemented in partnership with State Governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1 million habitations. The programme seeks to open new schools in those habitations which do not have schooling facilities and strengthen existing school infrastructure through provision of additional class rooms, toilets, drinking water, maintenance grant and school improvement grants.The revised framework brought out for SSA recently is now being looked upon as the primary vehicle for implementing the various provisions of the Right to Education act (RTE).The school education reforms being carried out through the SSA have broadly focused on three major categories --- teacher availability, improving physical infrastructure and improving the learning process.While reasonable progress has been made in terms of teacher recruitments and provision of physical infrastructure for schools, progress in achieving desired improvements in the learning processes and outcomes has remained a critical concern.The team emphasises the need for greater focus on learning processes, institutional and curricular reforms through clearer targets for making the school education reform process more effective.Improving the learning process involves curricular reform, teacher training, teacher learning material, learning aids, training for administrators and resource personnel,academic support through Block Resource centres/ cluster resource centres.This aspect is significant in ensuring desired learning outcomes are met through the school education system.The national curriculum framework drafted in 2005 is a step towards ensuring child-centred holistic learning through textbook reforms and appropriate teacher training.In terms of allocations towards the three components, the focus seems to be on building infrastructure and recruiting teachers and not so much on addressing issues in the learning process interims of reforming the curriculum and other associated structures. In 2009- 10, while 44.9 per cent of the funds went towards hiring additional teachers and 27 per cent towards infrastructure only 20.1 per cent was spent on activities which can be attributed to bring about improvements in the learning process.The revised SSA framework for 2011 has outlined clear timelines for provision of infrastructure and recruiting teachers while merely noting that ‘all quality interventions and other provisions’ would be implemented ‘with immediate effect’.The lack of a clear target allows for inefficiencies in the system to continue and prevents any stringent monitoring from taking place. A nation which could be the third largest economy in the world in a couple of decades, cannot afford to continue to disregard the importance of a meaningfully educated workforce.Although we do have a framework in place where the intent seems to be to move towards a meaningful and contextually relevant education system, the lack of real progress on the ‘quality’ front probably points to why we continue to lag behind other progressive nations.It is noteworthy that the proposed increase in budget allocation for SSA from Rs 15,000 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 21,000 crore in 2011-12, the highest across all the flagship schemes of the government of India, is a step towards ensuring that the focus shits towards improving the learning process to ensure more targeted efforts for achieving the curricular and associated reforms in the institutional environment.Amit Prakash and Elizabeth Mathew Social advisory team at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Private Ltd.