The possibility of the suspension of SEC, which was launched seven years ago with the objective of achieving the target of 100 per cent Net Enrollment Rate (NER) in primary education, comes in the face of the growing belief among many education policy makers, that this campaign is no more useful in bringing all children to schools.[break]
According to a recent progress report published by the National Planning Commission (NPC), the NER in primary education is just 93.7 per cent. This means that more than six per cent children are still out of schools. The MoE can not achieve the target of 100 per cent NER without bringing all those remaining children to schools.
Worse still, the growth rate of NER is just two per cent, which falls short of the required annual growth rate of 3.5 per cent. This makes it clear that the MoE is unlikely to achieve 100 per cent NER target by 2015, something that must be accomplished to meet one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the education sector.
“It is an uphill task to bring those six per cent children to schools,” says education expert Dr Tirtha Khaniya, who is also a member of the NPC. “We have now reached a point of saturation. We cannot bring all the remaining children to schools with our regular programs.” This is why, the MoE officials say, the SEC, which is held every year across the country with the start of new academic year, is useless.
As part of the Education for All (EFA) program - an international initiative aimed at increasing the NER to 100 per cent - the SEC was launched by the MoE in 2003. Initially, thousands of children flocked to their nearby schools during the SEC. However, in the last few years, the enrollment of children during the there-week-long SEC has not been so enthusiastic, making the MoE officials mull over new programs.
Targeting 21 districts
The Department of Education (DoE) has recently instructed District Education Offices (DEOs) of 21 districts, where the NER is lower than the national average, to come up with concrete plans to attract the remaining six per cent children to school. The MoE is likely to replace the SEC by a new program, the modality of which will be based on the outlines of the plans to be submitted by the DEOs.
“The modality of the new program will not be the same throughout the country,” said an official at the DoE. “It will be based on the requirements of each community even within the same district.” The DoE has asked the 21 DEOs to identify who the out-of-school children are, besides finding out answers to several questions such as why they did not get enrolled in schools during the SEC and what they really require to be able to come to schools.
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