Education for all: Punjab govt faces an uphill task

MULLANPUR: The Punjab government plans to achieve lofty targets under the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). All children in the age group of six to 14 years to be enrolled by December 2003, all children in the above age group to have completed five year’s schooling by 2007 and eight years by 2010 and universal retention by 2010. However, the figures on the ground point out that it will be an uphill task.
Punjab has over three lakh out of school children.The dropout rate in classes sixth to eighth is 27 per cent and as far as nationwide literacy levels are concerned Punjab is placed a low 15 among the states. In fact Punjab is still way behind in achieving the SSA’s goal of education for all.
A family survey conducted by the education department in 2002 pointed out that even though there is a primary school within walking distance (one kilometre) of every village and a health teacher-pupil ratio of less than 40 students per teacher, there had been a decline in the state primary schools in the last five years.
But the officials of the education department claim that the SSA will change all that. It has initiated schemes such as the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) for promoting education in villages.
‘‘In a village survey conducted by the department to evaluate the access of elementary education, 10,586 locations having out of school children were identified. These have been chosen to open the EGS centres,’’ said Baldev Raj, director of SCERT who is also looking after the SSA.
‘‘Under the EGS we are targeting communities which have out of school children and cannot send them to schools due to some reason even though they would want to. If such community having at least 20 out of school children approaches us we will take the school to them.
The community has to provide a room and some other basic infrastructure and the department will appoint a volunteer who will teach the children at the time they choose,’’ said Anurag Sidhu, assistant state project director, SSA.
In addition block resource centres are being set up in 140 blocks and 1,500 cluster resource centres will be set up. Under the SSA funds have also been released for training of 84,477 teachers and 1, 54,630 village education development committee members.