New Delhi: The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given its approval for continuation of the revised Samagra Shiksha Scheme for a period of five years i.e., from 2021-22 to 2025-26 with a total financial outlay of Rs.2,94,283.04 crore which includes Central share of Rs.1,85,398.32 crore.
The scheme covers 1.16 million schools, over 156 million students and 5.7 million Teachers of Govt. and Aided schools (from pre-primary to senior secondary level).
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that Sustainability Development Goals for education have been kept in mind. Pradhan added that universal education which was a part of the National Education Policy is a part of the scheme as well.
Under the National Education Policy 2020 and Samagra Siksha 2.0, formalisation of playschool is being done. Now the Government schools will also have playschools, Pradhan said.
The Scheme is implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme through a single State Implementation Society (SIS) at the State level. At the National level, there is a Governing Council/Body headed by the Minister of Education and a Project Approval Board (PAB) headed by Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy. The Governing Council/body will be empowered to modify financial and programmatic norms and approve the detailed guidelines for implementation within the overall Framework of the scheme. Such modifications will include innovations and interventions to improve the quality of school education.
In order to enhance the direct outreach of the scheme, all child centric interventions will be provided directly to the students through DBT mode on an IT based platform over a period of time.
The Scheme covers 1.16 million schools, over 156 million students and 5.7 million Teachers of Government and Aided schools (from pre-primary to senior secondary level) by involving all stakeholders of the school ecosystem i.e. Teachers, Teacher Educators, Students, Parents, Community, School Management Committees, SCERTs, DIETs, BITEs, Block Resource Persons, Cluster Resource Persons, Volunteers for providing quality, inclusive and equitable education.
Further, the scheme will have an effective convergence architecture with various Ministries/ developmental agencies of the Centre and State Governments. As envisaged in NEP 2020, there will be a greater focus on imparting skills among the students.
The expansion of vocational education will be done in convergence with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and other Ministries providing funding for Skills. The existing infrastructure of schools and ITIs and Polytechnics will be used to ensure optimum utilization of the facilities, not only for school going children but also for out of school children.
Union Budget, 2018-19 has announced that school education would be treated holistically and without segmentation from pre-primary to class XII. It is, in this context, that the Department launched the Integrated Scheme for School Education, Samagra Shiksha in 2018 by subsuming the erstwhile Centrally Sponsored Schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education (TE).
The scheme treats school education as a continuum and is in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG-4).
The scheme not only provides support for the implementation of the RTE Act but has also been aligned with the recommendations of NEP 2020 to ensure that all children have access to quality education with an equitable and inclusive classroom environment which should take care of their diverse background, multilingual needs, different academic abilities and make them active participants in the learning process.
