The Central government plans to improve the reach of education at the school level for children from Classes 1 to 10 by merging two of their schemes meant to guarantee universal education.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development plans to merge Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) — two similar schemes of the government for education to be universalised. Currently, while SSA is applicable from Class 1 till Class 8, RMSA is only for Class 9 and 10 only.
A meeting to deliberate on possibilities of merger of these two schemes was held in the ministry last week and a group of secretaries working on it will submit its report in the coming days. "During the discussion, it was agreed upon by everyone that it will be a good idea to merge these two schemes as they have similar mandate. We are now working on how to work on the merger and will come up with a detailed report soon," a senior official in the ministry of HRD said.
He added that the plan to merge these schemes was proposed because it was found that there was a lot of non-utilisation of funds. Both SSA and RMSA gets different budget. The separate schemes were created because the Right to Education did not extend upto Class 10 and the government needed a plan to bring children to school after Class 8.
"We saw that funds in these schemes were not being utilised properly. If a state has taken care of its primary education and does not need to spend so much for children up to class 8, they should be able to use the same fund for the older children. However, under the current mandate it was not being possible. Hence, we have decided to merge them," the official added.
