Dr. Avnish Jolly,Chandigarh,17 May:Between 2003 and 2005, the World Bank noted that the number of out-of-school children was reduced from 25 million to about 13.4 million. The transition rates from primary to upper primary also improved, from 75 per cent in 2002 to 83 per cent in 2006.
The World Bank on Thursday approved a US $600 million credit to support the Government of India’s ongoing Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Total cost of the SSA II is estimated at US $10.7 billion, of which the states of India will contribute close to 36.9 per cent, the Government of India will contribute around 53.7 per cent and development partners 9.4 per cent, World Bank revealed.
The Second Elementary Education Project aimed at improving quality and access to this critical social service, besides promoting equity by enabling hard-to-reach children to attend school.
It will create better learning conditions for all children and provide capacity building and academic support to state and sub-state education structures. In the area of oversight, the project will help monitor learning outcomes and support research and evaluation of quality initiatives.
Making strong progress in enhancing access to education, India has been elemental in reducing gender gaps, providing access for children from marginalised groups, minorities and extremely poor households, and reducing educationally and economically lagging states.
“The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme has served as a powerful vehicle to mobilise stakeholders at all community, district, state and national levels around the objective of ensuring that every child from 6 to 14 years is included in the education system,” World Bank Country Director (India) Isabel Guerrero said. The project is the second phase of support by the development partners to the government’s ongoing and evolving SSA programme, the bank said.
Guerrero said that the challenge now is to include those hardest to reach and to ensure that children get the quality education which is a critical foundation for both higher levels of education and creating the skills needed to have a significant impact on economic development.
With more and more children now entering school, the focus in this next phase is on quality with equity. In addition to capacity building and monitoring, the project will also support plans to enable the hard-to-reach children to attend school, World Bank added.
In areas where access to education remains low, the project will support provision of teachers and construction of primary and upper primary schools, besides providing free textbooks and grants to private aided schools to encourage them to subsidise enrolment of students.
The bank said that the first phase of development partners’ support to the programme saw a rapid expansion of primary school facilities across the country, especially in remote and socially disadvantaged areas. It further stated SSA II focuses on moving towards the achievement of quality goals and improved learning outcomes, in order to play a big role in moving towards the achievement of the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on a global scale.