About 70% of India lives in villages, and what underlines the 30:70 divide between urban and rural India in many ways is that primary education in rural areas is still in a state of neglect and needs to be rectified. To deal with this problem, the government of India has chosen the path of Education For All (EFA) or Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), as it is popularly known.
SSA has been the flagship programme of the now shaky United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. The programme was launched by the central government in partnership with the state governments. The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 brought out by Unesco mentions that the EFA stands by the belief that public policy can dramatically transform education systems in relation to their society within a few years, with the required political will and resource.
In India, the political will has been there in large measure as the Prime Minister heads the National Mission for SSA, which monitors the progress made under the scheme. SSA is expected to provide relevant elementary education for children in the country between the age group of six and 14 by 2010. The goal of SSA is consistent with that of the Constitution (86th) Amendment Act, 2002, which has made elementary education a fundamental right of every child in the country.
From the period 2003-04 to 2007, SSA has received external funding to the tune of Rs 4,700 crore from World Bank?s International Development Association (IDA); Department for International Development, UK, and the European Commission. SSA is expected to cover 19.2 crore children in the country. It evolved from the recommendations of the state education ministers? conference held in October 1998 to kick start Universal Elementary Education (UEE). The programme was launched in 2001-02. Allocation of funds under SSA, since its inception has shown high growth from Rs 350 crore in 2000-01 to Rs 7, 800 crore in 2005-06, and to Rs 11,000 crore in 2006-07, representing an increase of 41% over the previous year (2005-06).
In the 2008 Union Budget, SSA was allocated Rs 13,100 crore with the aim of moving the focus from access and infrastructure at the primary level to enhancing retention and improving the quality of learning. A mid-day meal, which is central to the SSA programme, got Rs 8,000 crore. Under the scheme, now, a cooked meal of a minimum of 300 calories is made available to 12 crore children in over 9.50 lakh schools. The allocation for the mid-day meal scheme has gone up from Rs 12,531.76 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 17,128 crore in 2006-07, signalling a hike of over 37%, according to a parliamentary standing committee report (2006).
The Unesco report mentions that government policies have to specifically target children from least-advantaged backgrounds for the EFA scheme to succeed. According to another Unesco report, state governments had estimated that 25 million Indian children in the 6-13 age group were out of school in 2002, but by 2005, their number had almost halved according to government figures. But then, a government-commissioned household survey done by the Social and Rural Research Institute in 2005 said that 13.5 million children were out of school ? a figure that was close to the results of NGO Pratham?s national survey, which put the figure at 14 million.
India levied an education cess to help along the programme. The 2% cess levied through the Finance Act 2004 in financial year 2004-05 yielded Rs 4,910 crore, in 2005-06, Rs 6, 910 crore and in 2006-07, it amounted to Rs 8,748 crore, according to the HRD ministry. The cess is used exclusively to finance SSA and the mid-day meal scheme of the government.
The Comptroller and Auditor General report on SSA (2005) mentions that the aim of the scheme is to make sure that all children complete eight years of elementary schooling by 2010. The government appears to be on target and despite derailing of the UPA government, the scheme is likely to stay on course, as was envisaged by the World Education Forum held in Dakar in 2000.
