Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA)

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. Existing schools with inadequate teacher strength are provided with additional teachers, while the capacity of existing teachers is being strengthened by extensive training, grants for developing teaching-learning materials and strengthening of the academic support structure at a cluster, block and district level. SSA seeks to provide quality elementary education including life skills. SSA has a special focus on girl's education and children with special needs. SSA also seeks to provide computer education to bridge the digital divide.

Performance Evaluation of SSA

♤ Significant reduction in the number of out-of-school children on account of SSA interventions has been noted. The number of out-of-school children has come down from

134.6 lakh in 2005 to 81.5 lakh in 2009 as per an independent study conducted by the Social and Rural Research Institute (SRI)-International Marketing Research Bureau (IMRB).

♤ The RTE Act stipulates to have a school within 1 km of radius of every habitat to ensure every child gets the opportunity of having a school within his habitation which has made positive dent in availability of schools.

♤ The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said the country has progressed the most in the world in sending children to schools by committed implementation of its right to education law and universal elementary education programme.

♤ India has made the largest progress (in absolute terms) by any country in the world reducing out-of- school (children) numbers from 20 million in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2006, and (around) 1.7 million in 2017.

Despite the progress made in SSA, there are some shortcomings and problems as well. The status of education in India in various reports highlights the following:

♤ Many schools set up under the stipulation of 1 km radius did not have the required number of students to have separate rooms for each class. In some cases, four classes were operational with only two teachers in two classrooms.

♤ A single school instead of many schools nearby could have served the purpose better with optimization of resources to augment better infrastructural facilities.

♤ Parents prefer to send their sons to private schools where as the girl child is sent to government schools.

♤ Though enrolment rate has increased but attendance rate was around 76.0 per cent in 2009-10 and the dropout rate was nearly 40.6 per cent in 2010-11 at the upper primary level. Thus SSA has failed to achieve its goals in bigger states like Rajasthan, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.

♤ The ASER report says there has not been much progress in compliance with various RTE- related norms. Despite the increase in SSA infrastructure budget, the proportion of schools with shortfall in the number teachers, classrooms, drinking water facilities, kitchen/shed, playground, complete boundary wall, a separate room for the headmaster has not increased much or remained more or less unchanged.