COMMUNITY MOBILISATION

     The 73^rd and 74^th Amendment Act of the Indian Constitution empowered the local Panchayat and Municipal bodies to play a key role for the expansion of primary education (Elementary education in the context of Sarva Shiksha Mission). Yet the main focus of Panchayat and Municipal bodies remain in the other developmental activities than on elementary education. Besides, in many cases these bodies failed to involve the community in overall activities of elementary education. In the present scenario it is a hard fact that the role of the community, Panchayats, Urban bodies have become vital and almost inseparable in the preview of UEE. In order to achieve UEE, SARVA SHIKSHA MISSION has thus stressed more on community mobilization activities as means to generate awareness among the community and ensuring participation in implementation of UEE. It has been established that major impediments against universal access, enrolment, retention and quality of education is the ignorance of the community and their non-involvement in the entire process.

     Keeping this in view Village Education & Health Committee in the Sansad areas and Ward Education & Health Committee in the ward areas have been constituted for effective system of decentralized decision.

Strategies:

1. Structural base has been developed in every Gram Sansad and Ward areas by forming Village Education & Health Committee (VEHC) and Ward Education & Health Committee (WEHC).

2. The VEHCs and WEHCs have been financially empowered by providing fund to their bank account. Fund pertaining to infrastructure development, enrolment drive and micro-planning exercise etc. have been give to VEHC and WEHC for ensuring their involvement.
3. Capacity of the VEHC/WEHC members has been built up by organizing intensive training every year.
4. A data base in the name of Child Register is maintained at the VEHC/WEHC level to ensure access, enrolment and retention.
5. MTA and PTA has been formed under the leadership of VEHC/WEHC for sharing of classroom process and achievement of the children.
6. In order to ensure infrastructure development a convergence strategy among Panchyat, School, DPSC and Municipal bodies has been developed.

·        A child census has been conducted in 2006 for identification of the out-of-school children. As per the household syrvey 1,07,512 no. of children have been identified outside the periphery of educational scenario. Taking this into consideration a special enrolment drive in the name of BHARTI SUNISCHITKARAN KARMASUCHI-2007 is going to be undertaken in the coming July, August and September to enroll these children and thereby identify the residual out-of-school children.

·        In order to identify out-of-school children and to enroll them in schools/centrers a special enrolment drive in the name of BHARTI SUNISCHITKARAN KARMASUCHI-2008 is being conducted throughout the district. The name, age and the reasons of being out of school children are identified and steps taken to enroll them either in formal schools or non-formal centres. The report will be available after completion of data entry.

Source : SSM, Bardhaman                                                         

This page is brought to you by
National Informatics Centre(Burdwan District Unit), Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, New Collectorate Building (3rd floor), Burdwan, West Bengal - 713 101, India, Email: wbbrd@nic.in