INDIASARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN

Fourteenth Joint Review Mission18th to 28th July 2011

Recommendations

Goal 1: ACCESS• All states carry out Child Tracking Surveys (CTS) in both rural

and urban areas to arrive at an accurate estimate of the number and disaggregation of OoSC,

• The MHRD should create a consensus among states on the definition of ‘dropout’ in order to allow proper estimation of OoSC, and

• develop a Concept Note on Special Training for OoSC.

– should be informed by an analysis of various approaches that have demonstrated results

– outline the vision, possible approaches and most effective strategies to address the learning needs of OoSC.

Goal 2: Gender Equity• Models I and II of KGBVs be expanded to more areas• Open new KGBVs in those EBBs where a large number of girls in the 11-14 years age

group remain out of school and the existing one KGBV is unable to cover them. • The states should take appropriate steps towards integrating the KGBV teachers in

regular teacher cadre of the state. – Karnataka has successfully demonstrated a system of deputing teachers from regular cadre to KGBV.

• In order to address the issue of fast turn over, it will be necessary to provide suitable incentives to these teachers, including residential quarters for them.

• Using the experiences of some states consider widening the scope of the KGBVs to address the issue of girls’ participation as well as underlying gender related issues that affect the status of women. – A research study to understand the current practices in the area of quality and

equity, followed by developing state plans with well articulated milestones and indicators could facilitate this process.

• Appropriate strategies for greater participation of Muslims girls and CWSN should be developed.

Community mobilization and Social Equity

• Community mobilisation efforts need to undergo a qualitative shift taking RTE norms into consideration

– Communities empowered on issues related to discrimination, rights, corporal punishment, and abuse.

• SMC training needs to be very different from the usual practice for VEC training

– the SDP need to be conceptualized comprehensively.

• SMC Training reflect specific needs and concerns of SC, ST, Muslims and CWSN.

• MHRD and TSG should develop a model SMC and SDP training guidelines to facilitate this process.

– The guideline for urban areas should be different from that for rural areas reflecting urban-specific needs and features.

Children in difficult circumstances

• The Mission recognizes the need for greater engagement of SSA with children who have experienced or are growing up experiencing prolonged violence closely.

• The impact of this on child’s emotions and personality is traumatic, deep and lasting, this needs to be understood.

• Such children need schooling that includes counseling and other forms of support going beyond regular educational processes.

• A Roundtable be organised at national level involving experts as well as departments and stakeholders whose help may be needed while working with these special groups.

– This Roundtable could help in analyzing national and international best practices leading to development of context specific plans that respond to the need of the child in a holistic manner.

Vision on Quality• Articulation of a holistic vision is critical to promote

harmonization of curriculum, textbooks, TLMs, teacher training and assessment systems, especially in the context of NCF.

• The mission applauds MHRD /TSG’s efforts to deepen the understanding of a holistic vision of quality and recommends that the efforts should be continued.

• The process now needs to be deepened and widened through workshops and other means at various levels.

• This also involves greater engagement with SCERTs, State Resource groups (SRGs) working on quality issues and other stakeholders in quality discourse through a variety of means including workshops and seminars.

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation

• The Mission recommends a deeper review of the CCE strategies in its early implementation to ensure that the approach is true to the vision of RTE.

• Source books on assessment already published for primary grades (and under progress at the upper primary level) by NCERT have been disseminated to states. The states should now ensure that these are further disseminated and used to develop and implement their CCE strategy.

• Exposure visits (for SCERTs, DIETs, teacher educators and academic support personnel, and teachers) to NGOs and states implementing high quality CCE (like Rajasthan) for perspective building and observing the use of the underlying principles of the CCE Framework could be useful to states.

• The development of Manuals for teachers to support design of formative and summative evaluations and formats for teacher action plans to improve/modify classroom instruction based on student CCE feedback could also facilitate the process.

Teachers’ Pre-Service Training

• Distance education is a necessary mode for overcoming the shortage of pre-service training capacity in states with huge backlog of untrained teachers and a large number of vacancies to fulfill RTE norms.

• The Mission recommends that the states using distance mode for pre-service teacher training must consider a combination of face to face and distance approaches, and must use the new D.Ed. curriculum to inform their course.

• States should engage with higher education institutes like local undergraduate colleges and universities for their facilities and resources, and NGOs, to supplement the efforts of SCERTs and DIETs to increase the reach for training.

• The Mission also recommends that the school education bureau in the MHRD should evolve a collaborative strategy with the higher education bureau in this respect.

Teachers’ in-service training

• The limited impact of in-service teacher training in the past is partially explained by lack of focus on perspective building aspects in the training designs, especially in the context of promoting equity as an essential element of quality.

• Mission recommends that MHRD prepares a guide based on review some of the training courses and modules from universities and NGOs known for their comprehensive and integral approach to quality and equity (B.EL. Ed course of Delhi University, D.ED course developed for NCTE, CARE India’s approaches, Digantar, Bodh, etc) to provide conceptual and practical frameworks for development of such training programmes.

National Achievement Surveys

• The mission recommends that the draft National Achievement Survey (NAS) report be reviewed and revised by a multi-disciplinary expert committee (experts in education, statistics etc), especially in the context of IRT.

• This reviewing exercise should involve representatives from states as well. The mission also recommends the development of a strategic plan for NAS at both national and state levels to determine its periodicity and use, as well as its long term resourcing.

Research and Analysis

• This JRM recommends that the MHRD /TSG should carry out a national level thematic analysis of the data collected by Monitoring Institutions to assess the progress and recognise other important trends over the years in different States / districts.

• A similar thematic analysis of all the researches carried out States is also needed.

Physical Infrastructure• In light of this extreme land constraint, creating possibilities of

vertical expansion are now essential.• Mission recommends a new policy be drafted to make this

mandatory for school architectural design and structural design. • This should be valid both for new schools and for additional

classrooms. • Mission recommends documentation of all provisions in school

infrastructure.• Normally, older building foundations which have provisions for

additional floors are not trusted by future builders due to lack of documentation.

• Making it mandatory might provide the requisite degree of assurance to convey the aspect of already strengthened foundations to future engineers.

• This data of strengthened foundations for additional floors can also be added to the planned data collection for the WSDP scheme.

Financial Management• Mission appreciates:

• Significant increases in outlays and releases of SSA funds in recent years, especially in 2010-2011.

• Significant progress in strengthening the capacity of staff in monitoring mechanisms at all levels (monthly and quarterly FMRs, quarterly review meeting of the Finance controllers, IPAI studies, reports of the statutory auditors etc).

• In order to enhance the performance of financial management• fill in all vacant position including those at block level in a time

bound manner; • States use /implement Financial Accounting Software (FAS) fully

in spirit and action in the top ten spending SSA States (by the January 2012 JRM).