New Delhi, February 12
The special schools for challenged children and alternative and innovative educational systems would for the first time come under the ambit of the seventh All India School Educational Survey. The NCERT Director, Prof J. S Rajput, said that the survey would provide the policy planners wider coverage of educational status and better inputs in the planning process.
The survey, which would commence later this year, would cover special schools for children with disabilities, enrolment and teachers in unrecognised schools, children and educational volunteers in school/centres under the education guarantee scheme and alternative and innovative education under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, enrolment and teachers in Sanskrit Pathshalas, Maktabs, Madrasas, para-teachers, non-teaching staff in secondary and higher secondary schools.
The Union Education secretary, Mr B. K. Chaturvedi, said that the survey by the NCERT to cover data regarding unrecognised schools, stagnation and drop-out rates and children with disability would provide a realistic inputs to the planners and other users.
The reference date of this survey would be September 30 and within six months the first provisional data would be available. He expressed the hope that the survey would be able to overcome many deficiencies of the earlier surveys and urged the NCERT to provide comprehensive training to personnel so that there is uniformity in the collection of data.
The survey would focus on planning of schooling facilities in rural areas of the country. They have been meeting the requirement of planning and monitoring the growth of school education in terms of participation rate, infrastructural facilities in schools, professional competence of teachers. These surveys have been the lone source for providing feedback on various national level programmes and schemes. The survey proposes to find out the enrolment of children belonging to disadvantaged groups, SCs, STs, girls and educationally backward minority community.
The survey will be conducted on a census basis covering about 0.6 million villages/towns, more than one million rural habitations and about one million schools in all the 35 states and Union Territories. The survey is a joint project of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry, National Informatics Centre and all states and
UTs.
