Initiatives taken by government to ensure quality education in Rural Areas
The Government of India has launched SamagraShiksha – an Integrated Scheme for school education, w.e.f. 2018-19, which is an overarching programme for the school education sector extending from pre-school to class XII and aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of school education. It envisages the ‘school’ as a continuum from pre-school, primary, upper primary, secondary to senior secondary levels and susbsumes the three erstwhile centrally sponsored schemes i.e. SarvaShikshaAbhiyan (SSA), RashtriyaMadhyamikShikshaAbhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
Bridging gender and social category gaps at all levels of school education is one of the major objectives of the scheme. The scheme reaches out to girls and children belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), minority communities and transgender. The scheme also gives attention to urban deprived children, children affected by periodic migration and children living in remote and scattered habitations. Under the scheme, provision has been made for giving preference to Special Focus Districts (SFDs), Educationally Backward Blocks (EEBs), LWE affected districts, and aspirational districts while planning interventions like setting up of primary schools, upper primary schools, construction of additional classrooms, toilets, Kasturba Gandhi BalikaVidyalayas (KGBVs).
A comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA has been initiated which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. This will benefit nearly 27crore school going children across the country. The initiative includes, where work is in progress.
- DIKSHA the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states/UTs: and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all grades (one nation, one digital platform)
- One earmarked TV channel in SWAYAM PRABHA per class from 1 to 12 (one class, one channel)
- SWAYAM Portal, E-PATHASHALA, extensive use of Radio, Community radio and CBSE Podcast- ShikshaVani
- Special e-content for visually and hearing impaired developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/ YouTube
The information was given by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ in a written reply in the LokSabha today.