Arun C. Mehta, head of the Educational Management
Information System (EMIS) at the National University
of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA),
said here on Friday that NUEPA would soon be coming
out with a unified data-capturing format for
collection and processing of data on schools.
Speaking to The
Hindu on
the sidelines of the Regional Workshop on Data
Analysis, Sharing and Dissemination organised by the
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) Kerala, Mr. Mehta said
that the unified school data capturing system being
developed by NUEPA would be rolled out throughout the
country, including Kerala, by next academic year.
‘‘The Government of India had constituted a committee,
chaired by the Vice-Chancellor of NUEPA, to study and
analyse how a unified system can be developed to
capture and consolidate statistics and data related to
schools in the country. As per this, a pilot project
on unified school data capturing has already been
implemented in Puducherry and two districts in West
Bengal. By 2012-13 the unified data capturing system
will be implemented in the rest of the States,'' Mr.
Mehta said.
He said that information on all levels of school
education, right from standard one to the higher
secondary level, would be covered in the new unified
system that had been mooted to avoid duplicity because
of the prevalence of too many State and national level
educational information systems. The unified data
capture system will primarily be a consolidation of
the District Information System for Education (DISE)
covering elementary education under the SSA and the
Secondary Education Management Information System
(SEMIS) covering secondary education under the
Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), both
developed by NUEPA.
‘‘Under the new data capturing system, we will collect
information on all schools, including unaided schools,
unrecognised schools and madrasas. According to the
new approach on educational planning, as per the Right
to Education (RTE) Act, education is the basic right
of every child, even if he or she is studying in an
unrecognised institution. Collecting information of
such institutions and bringing those students back to
the mainstream is also part of educational planning,''
Mr. Mehta said.
He said that there was a major disparity in the DISE
information provided by the SSA Kerala in 2011 as a
large number of unrecognised schools in the State have
not been covered. ‘‘Even though the State has almost
100 percent literacy, the enrolment ratio (number of
students enrolled divided by population of children)
in primary level is only 67. Where are the rest of the
children? Obviously they are all enrolled in
unrecognised institutions,'' he said.
Mr. Mehta, who inaugurated the two-day workshop, said
that as per the RTE Act, school education planning,
from now on, will begin from the school level. It will
be the responsibility of the respective school
management committee, constituted in schools as per
the Act, to formulate a detailed development and
educational plan for their institution.
‘‘This bottom-top approach on planning will ensure
better results in terms of development of schools and
enhancement of quality of education. Every school will
have to prepare their plan based on the nine
parameters as given under RTE,'' said Mr. Mehta, who
was instrumental in the development of DISE, which
received three major e-governance award in 2010.
As many as 137 SSA representatives from Kerala,
Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, and
Lakshadweep participated in the workshop.
Representative of the World Bank, Deepa Shankar,
Educational Consultants India Ltd (EdCil) senior
consultant Shailendra Sharma and Shailendra Sidgel
from UNESCO also participated in the workshop.
