Where are we today with respect to girls' education

(Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan 2002);− Make elementary education a Fundamental Right of every single child in the 6–14 agegroup (93 rd Constitutional Amendment, GOI 2002).Source: Original taken from Ramachandran 1998, revised February 2003.In addition to these national initiatives, the Education Guarantee Scheme introduced bythe Government of Madhya Pradesh made a deep impact on the way UEE wasapproached. This programme was initiated with a state-wide household survey ofchildren – called the Lok Sampark Abhiyan in 1996, an ambitious exercise inparticipatory rural appraisal of the state of primary education in DPEP districts (it hassince been replicated recently in 2000) 4 . It was a mammoth undertaking, a door-to-doorexercise in social mapping to ascertain the number of children between the ages of 5 to15years who do not have access to schools, who are enrolled in schools, and those who areactually attending schools and to build upon the successes of the Total LiteracyCampaigns (TLC) of the early 1990s in creating/reinforcing social awareness regardingeducation and the privileged place it occupies in every individual’s life, especiallychildren 5 . The appraisal effectively highlighted the discrepancies between existing dataand the ground reality, and indicated that non-enrolment remained a pressing issuealongside that of increasing dropouts (Vyasulu, 2000).Box 2: Madhya Pradesh Education Guarantee SchemeThe scheme attempts to involve communities in educational programmes and processes. If acommunity without primary schooling facility demands a teacher, the government guaranteesto provide a teacher, his salary, training and teaching-learning aids within 90 days. Thecommunity has to enrol at least 25 children in tribal areas and 40 in non-tribal areas and alsoprovides space for teaching. It can suggest a suitable local resident as a teacher. Forty primaryschools on an average were started on each day of the year in 1997 and one-third of themwere using open space for teaching and learning. The objective of the EGS is to mobilise thePanchayats and attempt to create better primary schools than the formal mainstream schools.A process of decentralisation and community participation in school education is believed tohave been set in motion by the state.(Source: Gopala Krishnan and Amita Sharma: “A New EGS: Education Guarantee Schemein Madhya Pradesh”, Occasional Papers, Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission, 1998.4 ‘This set the stage for the introduction of EGS to increase access to schools while reinforcingthe decentralised vision of education planning implicit in DPEP and the innovative curriculum ofAS. The EGS went a step further by firmly locating itself in community demand for education,empowering it to “enforce the accountability of the state to universalise primary education and atthe same time share(s) a part of the resource requirement” (Sharma & Gopalakrishnan, 2000:3).5 The process involved is rather simple, where a settlement with a population of 40 students in theage group of 6 to14 years (the number is reduced to 25 in the case of socially marginal groups orsparsely populated areas) and no school in the radius of one kilometre, can demand a primaryeducation facility from the state. The government has to respond with a fully functional EGSschool within 90 days of receiving the demand. The scheme was introduced in January 1997, withthe primary objective of providing minimum education facilities to socially, economically, aswell as geographically marginal groups in the state, schools that were sensitive to the needs oflocal communities and cost-effective without compromising on quality.’ (Aarti Saihjee, 2002)India Case Study Page 9 20 June 2003