SAMAGRA SHIKSHA - An Integrated Scheme for School Education

A. Child Education

It was announced in Budget 2018-19 as an Integrated Scheme for School Education- aimed at ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education from pre-school to senior secondary classes.

Major Objectives of the Scheme

• Provision of quality education and enhancing learning outcomes of students;
• Bridging social and gender gaps in school education;
• Ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels of school education;
• Ensuring minimum standards in schooling provisions;
• Promoting vocationalisation of education;
• Support States in implementation of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009; and
• Strengthening and up-gradation of SCERTs/State Institutes of Education and DIETs as nodal agencies for teacher training.

It subsumes 3 Major Government Schemes

• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: It was launched in 2002 and it aims at universalizing elementary education in India in a time bound manner.
• Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan: It was launched in 2009 with the objective of enhancing access to secondary education and improving its quality.
• Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education: Conceptualized in 1986, it aimed at creating a sound institutional infrastructure for pre-service and in-service training of elementary and secondary school teachers. It led to establishment of District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs), Colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs), Institutes of Advanced Study in Education (IASEs) and Strengthening of State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERTs).

Performance Analysis and Emerging Issues

• In FY 2018-19, across 29 states, 77 per cent of the approved budget was for activities under elementary education, 21 per cent for secondary education, and 2 per cent for teacher education.
• Expenditure under the scheme has been low. In FY 2018-19 less than two third (63 per cent) of the approved funds were spent at the all India level.
• A component-wise break-up of the scheme considering 16 large states, indicates that teacher salaries constitute the largest share of approved budgets at 35 per cent. This is followed by “Quality interventions” (19 per cent) and “RTE entitlements” (16 per cent).
• Learning levels are low across both elementary and secondary classes. According to the National Achievement Survey (NAS 2018), only 13 per cent of Class X students could correctly answer more than half the questions for Mathematics and 11 per cent could do the same for Science.
• The government must counter the follies of underspent funds, improper fund allocation to subcomponents via mandating strict implementation of guidelines of the scheme.