THE government's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (education for all) is in serious trouble. Many places have no schools and many schools have no teachers. A recent report in this paper shows that most states have failed dismally to reach their teacher-appointment targets for 2003-04.
Bihar's achievement was 0%, despite which Laloo Yadav won the election handsomely. Clearly Biharis expect so lit-tle from the government that zero performance in education no longer constitutes non-performance. The achievement of teacher appointment targets was just 21 % in West Bengal and 22% in UP. It was best in Orissa (79%) and Jharkand (69%) where appointments were decentralised to the panchayat or community level. In Bihar, power remains tightly centralised and that militates against flexi-ble hiring. This drives home the need to decentralise educa-tion. Ideally panchayats and communities should have the authority and funds to hire, pay and fire teachers. That alone will ensure accountability to the community and end the current scandalous state of education where teacher absenteeism can be as high as 40 %.
...Many opted for para-teachers appointed by panchayats rather than regulars. The ostensible reason was to increase accountability and reduce tea-cher absenteeism, but a more compelling reason was bank-ruptcy. Para-teachers are not state government employees, and so can be paid a tiny fraction of government teachers' salaries. True, they cannot provide high-quality education, yet some education is better than none. But as long as they are appointed by state governments, they can always claim and get parity with regular teachers. To prevent this,they must be appointed by panchayats, not state governments.- Teachers day out Give Panchayats Right To Hire & Fire, Economic Times, 30/06/2004 N20 /eldoc/n20_/30june04et1.pdf

Government Schemes Government Inefficacy Rural Education Govt SChools

The charwaha vidyalaya scheme was launched by Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav in December, 1991, with much fanfare. The project was even appreciated by UNICEF and was quickly adopted by Cen-tral schemes like TRYSEM, Indira Awas Yojana, IRDP-RLGEP and ICDS.
It aimed to impart basic education to children of poor peasants who sup-plemented their parents' meagre income by cattle-herding, "Earn while you learn" was the attraction. The concept envisaged that children bring their herd and learn while the animals grazed in the fields attach-ed to the schools.- Laloo Yadav's dream flounders, Abhijit Sinha, The Pioneer, 22/01/95,  /eldoc/n00_/22jan95pio1.pdf

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan a pan-India effort of the Government of India to universalise elementary education with community participation — has crashed in Punjab. The state has instead earned the dubious distinction of being the slowest in implementing the programme.

Peeved at the tardy progress Union hrd Minister Arjun Singh wrote to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who is also the chairman of the Abhiyan in the state: “In a recent review of the ssa (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) at goi level on September 28-29, 2004, it became evident that Punjab’s ssa expenditure during the current year up to August 2004, was only 5.99 percent of the approved outlay. Furthermore, the latest estimate of school children is one lakh in your state. These are serious concerns and…kindly personally review the programme…”

The Abhiyan, launched in 2001, is a joint effort of the Government of India and the state governments with the former allotting 75 percent funds subject to the condition that 25 percent of the contributions will come from the states.

The Abhiyan failed to take off in Punjab where the state’s expenditure of the total outlay was just about 5 percent. Over a lakh children have still not been enrolled in schools. Those who did enroll had to go without benches, blackboards and textbooks.

Edu committes Govt Inefficiency SSA

Just a 3.5% decline in the school dropout rate b a decade, a mere 33% recruitment of teachers, 370 Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV) functioning without permanent buildings. The government's efforts on primary education are nothing more than a lick and a promise.

Parliament's standing committee report on human resource development says "primary education has not really been the priority area of the government". Debunking the government's claim that the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has resulted in an 'outstanding" decline in the number of out-of-school children, from 23 crore in April 2003 to 61 lakh in December last year, the committee said it was an "illusion".

"Proper monitoring of the developments and failures be ensured regularly," the committee has told the government. Lack of teachers and absenteeism where teachers are present are major causes for the high dropout rate, according to the committee report. "Because of this, the dropout rate has come down by just 3.5% during the last decade-from 42.6% in 1991 to 39.1% in 2001." The government's policy to substitute regular trained teachers with under-trained Shiksha Karmis has been criticised by the committee.

"Instead of directly attacking the problem of teacher absenteeism, the department (of education) has created a cadre of semi-trained teachers. Sincere steps should be taken to ensure that only fully trained teachers were into teaching process."

Nothing the abysmal state of adult education, the committee pointed out that only 77% of the allocated funds were used. "An increase of a mere Rs 17 cr from last fiscal year would not be adequate in the face of the gigantic task before the government," the report said.

Government Schools Govt CShemes and Progs Govt inefficiancy

This is an Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) school. Having enrolled 68 children in classes I to V, it usually has an attendance of just a handful in the beginning of the session due to the harvesting season. During rest of the year, the attendance is about 50 per cent, although the names entered in the register are marked present for compulsions such as the mid day meal, scholarships and pressure on teachers to enroll and retain every school aged child in school. However, the same names can be seen in the private school in the vicinity. Yes, girls outnumber boys in enrolment and they belong to ex-tremely deprived groups and low caste. However, many of the boys from the same families are enrolled in private school. Parents report that the quality of education of-fered in private school makes a difference. It is the boy, and not the girl, who has to be well educated in order to run the family. Girls can pickup some basics from the government school.

General Critique/  government Schemes and progs/ Inefficiency
- Teach me not, K.V.Rao, Telegraph, 20/06/1995, /eldoc/n00_/20jun95tel1.pdf