The School Education Department of Madhya Pradesh had a challenging
task before them. They wanted to achieve universal elementary
education and promote quality education up to class 12. The massive
number of stakeholders involved made the task both important and
demanding. They had to administer more than 1 lakh schools, 3.5
lakh teachers and staff, maintain and monitor a database of more
than 1.6 crore students.
School education is the largest sector in the state in terms of
number of beneficiaries, geographical reach, number of institutions
and engagement of human resources. It is also the most complex
sector with multiple departments and local bodies exercising
control over the workforce engaged in it. Over the past many years,
the workload of the departments, institutions and offices dealing
with school education has increased manifold without corresponding
increase in the quantity and capability of the supervisory
staff.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009
requires the state to provide free elementary education and ensure
compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary
education by all children between the age group of 6-14. The
inception of RTE Act in 2009 has levied additional expectations on
the state-school education departments to be able to provide
transparent and accountable governance apart from ensuring quality
education to the masses.
These challenges led to the development of a bilingual, database
driven, dynamic portal in collaboration with the National
Informatics Center (NIC), Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh for all the
schools. The portal www.educationportal. mp.gov.in facilitates a
single source of live and authentic information related to school
education for all the stakeholders of the state education system
namely students, teachers, citizens and educational managers.
Benefits to stakeholders
The portal facilitates effective learning and enhancement of
achievement levels of students by online monitoring of their
performance in the monthly tests. Online application ensures timely
availability of all assistance like free textbooks, uniforms,
cycles, and scholarships to the children as per their eligibility.
Parents can also submit online demand for more teachers to ensure
an appropriate pupil-teacher ratio. Based on the demands received,
the administration can engage the services of the guest teacher as
per the norms.
As per the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995, the application
facilitates the department to register the CWSN (Children With
Special Needs) and enables online tracking of the assistance being
provided to the child to ensure personalized followup. The portal
also provides services to 1.6 lakh Out of School Children (OOSC) by
facilitating the automation of various processes involved in their
identification, registration and enrolment. Apart from this, it
facilitates the citizens to register any OOSC in their locality and
work area online.
Additionally, the portal provides the list of classes and schools
with poor academic performance of students and the responsible
subject teachers. Based on this report, the District Education
Officers (DEO) can take necessary corrective action to augment the
school with more teachers or upgrade the skills of the poor
performing teacher or replace the teacher.
The portal includes a well integrated suite of e-governance
applications and facilitates a common platform that fulfils the
needs for all school education related services. “To be
effective, a portal must be alive with the latest content,”
saysManoj Jhalani, Principal Secretary, Government of Madhya
Pradesh. “This solution gives us the tools to easily make
such updates. With up-to-date information, the school-government
interaction and information sharing achieves the much needed
transparency.”
Madhya Pradesh has made dramatic improvements in the achievement
levels of primary school children, leading to improved results for
the state. “Effective implementation of the RTE Act 2009
along with better administration has been the major gains of this
project,” says Jhalani. “Providing quality education to
nearly 1.6 crore children including under privileged children along
with ensuring better resource management have been the high points
in the project’s implementation.
About Author
Ayushman Baruah is a Bangalore-based business and technology journalist with an insatiable appetite for news. He closely monitors and writes on emerging technologies such as cloud, mobility and social computing. Driven by his interest, he eagerly tracks the Indian IT-BPO sector keeping a close watch on the performance of the companies which thereby shape and shake market trends. During his career, he has covered tech events both at the national and international level and written several trend-setting news, features, and opinions.
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