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| HRD ministry raps J&K govt, says scheme showing negative trends | | Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
JAMMU, Jun 11: State government has virtually ruined centrally sponsored Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) scheme owing to its casual and non-serious approach. The scheme has begun showing negative trends.
What to talk of its implementation, state government has not bothered to even fulfill commitments which it had made with Project Approval Board (PAB) of Union Human Resource Development ministry when the scheme was first introduced. Situation has aggravated compelling HRD ministry to acclaim that while most of the indicators of implementation of the scheme are showing negative trend, policy makers are not concerned at all.
These observations were made by officials of Union Human Resource Development ministry during 190th meeting of Project Approval Board (PAB) held on May 21, 2012 for approval of the annual work plan and budget of Jammu and Kashmir. They pointedly said that progress with regard to civil works and teacher recruitment is very slow.
Cumulative completion rate is only 43 percent whereas the expenditure rate is 96 percent, officials said. They maintained that there is a strong possibility of substantial funds remaining parked at district or sub-district levels since a number of works which had been sanctioned in the year 2002-03 are also pending. HRD officials said that state has not shown any progress in commissioning third party evaluation since inception of SSA.
They said that state has not submitted city specific plan separately for million plus city of Srinagar. Official expressed concern over the fact that enrolment at primary level is declined by more than 5 percent and about 3 percent at upper primary level. In the government schools, decline was higher i.e. 7 percent for Primary Schools and 5 percent for Upper Primary Schools.
Retention rate has declined from 95 to 86 during last one year while average annual dropout rate remains high at 11 percent. Transition rate has declined from 90 to 87. The officials concluded that while most of the indicators are showing negative trend, state plan shows no analysis of the same.
They said that despite being repeatedly told to undertake school mapping exercise, state government preferred otherwise. It is yet to ascertain actual number of unserved habitations or out of school children in spite of giving commitments to the PAB several times. It was stated plan for universal access and requirement of new schools proposed by the state each year is entirely different and incongruent with the previous year
Citing an example of this, the officials said that in district Poonch where all the habitations were provided with primary schools and the access was 100 percent last year, the state is demanding 77 primary schools without any explanation of deviation from last year's status. They asserted that PAB had approved 397 primary schools and 330 upper primary schools in the year 2011-12.
Out of these, 85 primary schools are yet to be made operational while the state government has not upgraded any of the sanctioned primary schools to upper primary schools. Besides, J&K was sanctioned 10,894 primary schools cumulatively, out of which 10,809 are reportedly operational, leaving a gap of 85. Even these schools are perhaps not completely operational as Teaching Learning Equipment (TLE) has been provided only to 4908 (45 percent) schools.
Official of HRD pointed out that state had a target of 33,151 out of school children to bring them school in 2011-12. It could only cover only 2461 children i.e. 7 percent of the target by mainstreaming them into schools. They expressed serious concern over the fact that 30,690 identified out of school children could not be covered. Against a target of 33,151 children under special training, only 5 percent could be covered.
Official took to task state government for using old data for out of school children or sporadic surveys done by CRCs/BRCs or Zonal officers. They said that the data base is neither reliable not universal. Regarding the future course of action, HRD ministry has asked the state government to give a written commitment for meeting its share as per the revised fund sharing pattern.
First installment of the state share should be released to the state society within one month of the releases of central share to the state society. Second installment would only be released after the previous installment of state share has been transferred to the state implementation society and substantial progress has been made in expenditure as far as money already released is concerned.
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