Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is a flagship programme of the Central Government for achievement of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time bound manner, as mandated by 86th amendment to the Constitution of India making free and compulsory education to the children of 6-14 years age group, a fundamental right. The SSA is being implemented in partnership with State Governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1 million habitations.
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.
The SSA seeks to provide quality elementary education. The 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.
CALP
During 2009-10 to 2012-13, Gujarat had incurred against primary education `19,533 crores, 89% of the total expenditure while the central Government had given `2326 crores, which was only 11%.
The Computer Aided Learning Program (CALP) is an innovative program that creates an environment, where learning and assessment is fun and the opportunities to learn are equitable among the rural and urban children. The CALP is primarily introduced in rural government elementary schools covering the classes 1 to 8 to attract and retain children and also in the process, enhance the quality of learning by making “Learning Play”, “Assessment Fun” and “Equal knowledge for all”.
Objective and Process
The main objective of the CAL programme is to attract the children, retain them in the schools and to improve the quality of the education through animated multimedia based educational content. CALP objective is sought to be achieved through story based, animated cartoons, interactive games and riddles with the use of multimedia features. Spontaneous, self initiated and self regulated, the three critical aspects that make an activity play are integrated in CALP to make learning play and use of cartoons, story line and music is intended to make CALP as self initiated and engaged in learning.
Benefits
This programme has improved the IT literacy in the rural areas particularly and will go a long way in removing the digital divide in the state.
The emphasis is on how to improve the interest of students in school studies and thus increase school attendance and better performance in examinations.
It will improve the teaching process with the integration of the IT in the class. The children will be better prepared for getting into secondary education and continue with computer education at a higher level.
Basic Objectives
- To make the students and teachers familiar with computer
- To teach the subjects through computers
- To use the educational software for hard spots.
- To enable the government school students especially rural area students to be at par with the urban school students
| Year | No. of Schools provided with Computer Lab |
| 2005-06 | 500 |
| 2006-07 | 4061 |
| 2009-10 | 275 |
| 2011-12 | 14856 |
| Total | 20502 |
In 2003-04, the procurement of 2934 computers was made. These computers were installed in 517 upper primary schools. The distribution of computers was as mentioned below :
- District level school – 10 computers + 1 printer
- Block level school – 6 computers + 1 printer
- Cluster level school – 5 computers + 1 printers
In this fashion, a computer lab was established in 25 district level, 224 block level and 268 cluster level schools. After installation of computers, SSA Gujarat has tied up with a company for the basic training of computer operating to teachers. In this programme, 517 Head masters were oriented for 1 day regarding the advantages of computer and its usage. Immediately after that 517 teachers were trained for 10 days regarding the fundamentals of computes, MS Office, Internet etc. Thereafter, each of 517 teachers trained 10 more teachers for 10 days for same syllabi. As a result, 5687 teachers were fully prepared for the use of computers.
After completing the teachers training, the trained teachers started using Powerpoint for preparing the lesson card.
SSA Gujarat has tied up with Azim Premji Foundation for the development of content. A series of meetings were held at various levels. Finally, 23 topics were identified, which were already prepared by foundation in Hindi and English medium. For giving the local touch to the software, the scripts of all 23 topics were re-written in Gujarati language with the help of 25 teachers. Finally, after the evaluation, these 23 topics are ready. The same will be implemented in 517 schools in the coming academic session. For this the training of teachers will be completed in vacation period.
Other Initiatives
For 13 years, the “Kanya Kelavani Rathyatra” – “Shala Praveshotsav” is being organised to promote Girls Education and enrolment every year in June. And it has resulted in an increase in enrolment rate of children from 75.07% in 2001-02 to 99.24% in 2012-13. It has further resulted in decrease of dropout rate of children by 20.93% to 2.04% in Std 1-5th and from 38.92% to 7.08% in 2012-13 in Std 1 to 7. One would appreciate that in last 10 years, literacy rate of India has increased by 8.64% whereas in Gujarat, it has increased by 10.17%. And Female literacy rate has increased by 12.93%.
Targets under Millennium Development Goal by year 2020
- Reduce Drop-out rate of up to 5%
- Enhance male literacy to 95% from the current 87.2%
- Enhance Female literacy rate to 81% from the current 70.7%
- Reduce Gender gap to 14% from the current 16.5%
Gunotsav
The focus today in primary education in Gujarat has shifted to addressing the quality, to address gaps in the quality of learning, to bring accountability and increase stake holder and community participation with awareness about quality education. For this purpose, Government of Gujarat launched GUNOTSAV, which in Gujarati means “Celebrating Quality”. The entire state government machinery is mobilised to see and evaluate quality of education.
The main purpose of Gunotsav is to make sure that all children studying in primary schools (Std 2 to 8) achieve quality improvements in basic reading, writing and numerical skills. It also reviews community participation and utilization of basic facilities in schools.
Smart Class
The state has a vision of smart class with use of the latest technology of audiovisual mode for teaching. It improves grasping and makes long lasting impression in the mind of the students. It creates active interaction between teacher and students and over `20 crores of budget is planned in FY 2014-15.
Green School
This initiative is the first of its kind in entire country. The concept consists of an integrated sustainable school with the provision of school augmentation and modification, rain water harvesting system, plantation and waste water disposal management, solar energy and solar cooking. It is proposed to develop some 70+ schools as green and sustainable schools. This will create environment consciousness among the students who are future citizens. Over `10 Crore + budget has been allocated in this financial year by the state government.
