Department of School Education and Literacy has two centrally sponsored schemes viz. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to assist States in universalization of elementary education and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) for universal access to secondary education.
The Central Government through SSA, supports States/UTs on early grade reading, writing & comprehension, and early Mathematics programmes through a sub-programme namely ‘Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat’ (PBBB) in classes I and II. Further the Government has launched Rashtriya Aavishkar Abhiyan (RAA) programme on 09.07.2015, inter alia, as a sub-component of SSA and RMSA, to motivate and engage children of the age group from 6-18 years in Science, Mathematics and Technology through observation, experimentation, inference drawing, model building, etc. both through inside and outside classroom activities.
Additionally, under SSA, the State Governments and UT Administrations are supported on several interventions to improve teaching standards, including regular in-service teachers’ training, induction training for newly recruited teachers, training of all untrained teachers to acquire professional qualifications through Open Distance Learning (ODL) mode, recruitment of additional teachers for improving pupil-teacher ratios, academic support for teachers through block and cluster resource centres, continuous and comprehensive evaluation system to equip the teacher to measure pupil performance and provide remedial action wherever required, and teacher and school grants for development of appropriate teaching-learning materials, etc.
The Central Government has launched the ‘Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching’ in December, 2014 with a vision to comprehensively address all issues related to teachers, teaching, teacher preparation, professional development, curriculum design, research in pedagogy and developing effective pedagogy.
The NCERT has developed Performance Indicators for Elementary Education (PINDICS) to track teacher performance and attendance in Government schools. PINDICS have been shared with State Governments/UTs to assess teacher’s performance.
In the recent Meeting of Education Ministers on Teachers’ Education held at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on 8.2.2016 several steps for improvement of the quality of education were discussed. These include; internship for Teacher Education Programmes in Government Schools; development of an accreditation framework for Teacher Education Institutions and volunteerism involving retired teachers.
In order to provide quality education to students at the secondary level, various interventions are funded under the RMSA. These include provisions for: (i) additional teachers to improve Pupil Teacher Ratio, (ii) induction and in-service training for Principals, Teachers, Master Trainers and Key Resource Persons, (iii) Maths and Science kits, (iv) Lab equipments, (v) Special teaching for learning enhancement, (vi) ICT facilities in schools, (vii) introduction of vocational education component at the secondary level.
Further, for improving the quality of school education, the School Standards & Evaluation framework, known as ‘Shaala Siddhi’ has been developed by National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), to enable schools to evaluate their performance in a more focused and strategic manner and to facilitate them to make professional judgments for improvement.
Under SSA programme, approval was given to projects worth Rs. 37516.71 crore & Rs. 48693.52 crore during 2014-15 & 2015-16 respectively for improving the quality. Further, amounts of Rs. 456.00 crore & Rs. 525.00 crore have been approved for Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat during the same period.
This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani today in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question.
Source: PIB
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