Education in India

 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE)

  • Article 21-A of the Constitution of India and its consequent legislation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 became operative in the country on 1st April 2010.
  • All States/UTs have notified their State RTE Rules.

Bridging Gender and Social Category Gaps in Elementary Education

  • SSA has identified Special Focus Districts on the basis of adverse performance on indicators of girls’ enrolment, as well as concentration of SC, ST and minority communities.
  • RTE-SSA provides a clear thrust and special focus on education for girls and children belonging to disadvantaged groups and weaker sections; these include ensuring availability of primary and upper primary schools within the habitation as prescribed under the RTE Rules, uniforms, textbooks, etc.

Mid-Day Meal Programme

  • With a view to enhance enrolment, retention and attendance and simultaneously to improve the nutritional status of children, a Centrally Sponsored Scheme “National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education (NP-NSPE)” was launched on 15th August, 1995.
  • The Scheme was extended during 2008-09 to cover children of upper primary classes and the name of the Scheme was changed as ‘National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools’.
  • At present all the primary and upper primary Government, Government-aided Local Body Schools, National Child Labour Projects (NCLP) Schools, the centres run under Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) / Alternative & Innovative Eduction (AIE), Madarsas and Maqtabs supported under SSA are covered under Mid-Day Meal Scheme.
  • The scheme is being revised from time to time in its content and coverage.
  • The Mid Day Meal Scheme covered 68 crore elementary class children in 12.12 lakh schools in the country.
  • The objectives of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme are to address two of the pressing problems for majority of children in India, viz. hunger and education by :
  • Improving the nutritional status of children in Classes I-VIII in Government, Local Body and Government aided schools, and EGS and AIE centers, NCLP schools and Madarsas and Maqtabs supported under SSA.
  • Encouraging poor children, belonging to disadvantaged sections, to attend school more regularly and help them concentrate on classroom activities.
  • Providing nutritional support to children of elementary stage in drought-affected areas during summer vacation.

Scheme for Providing Quality Education for Madarsas (SPQEM)

  • SPQEM seeks to bring about qualitative improvement in madarsas to enable Muslim children attain standards of the national education system in formal education subjects.
  • The salient features of SPQEM scheme are :
  • To strengthen capacities in Madarsas for teaching of the formal curriculum subjects like Science, Mathematics, language, Social Studies etc. through enhanced payment of teacher honorarium;
  • Training of such teachers every two years in new pedagogical practices;
  • Providing science labs, computer labs with annual maintenance costs in the secondary and higher secondary stage madarsas;
  • The unique feature of this modified scheme is that it encourages linkage of madarsas with National Institute for Open Schooling (NIOS), as accredited centres for providing formal education, which will enable children studying in such madarsas to get certificates for class 5, 8, 10 and 12.

MAHILA SAMAKHYA PROGRAMME

  • Mahila Samakhya (MS) is an ongoing scheme for women’s empowerment that was initiated in 1989 to translate the goals of the National Policy on Education into a concrete programme for the education and empowerment of women in rural areas, particularly those from socially and economically marginalized groups.
  • Currently the programme is being implemented in 126 districts of ten States Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand.
  • The MS programme is at present being implemented in 41622 villages in 126 districts covering 638 Educationally Backward Blocks (EBBs) in these States.
  • The programme reaches out to close to 4 million rural poor women, mobilized into 50900 village level collectives called Mahila Sanghas.

 NATIONAL BAL BHAVAN

  • The National Bal Bhavan is an autonomous organisation funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
  • From its humble beginning in 1956 till the present time the Bal Bhavan movement has spread across the length and breadth of the country.
  • There are currently 179 Bal Bhavans and Bal Kendras across the country.
  • They conduct varied creative activities for children, specially children from deprived sections of society and also rural children.
  • A Children’s Creativity Centre — the first International centre on the pattern of National Bal Bhavan is functioning in