Out of school children : Government Interventions

Strategies for Out of School Children
Education Gurantee Schools in unserved habitations and alternative and innovative education for out of school children including children in difficult circumstances

The Education Guarantee Scheme and Alternative and Innovative Education scheme is a part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan framework. Guidelines issued separately under the EGS & AIE shall apply. The management structure for implementation of EGS & AIE will be incorporated in the management structure of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Planning, appraisal and supervision processes will also be the same.

The new scheme makes provision for diversified strategies and has flexible financial parameters. It has provided a range of options, such as EGS, Back to School Camps, Balika Shivirs, etc. There are four broad focus areas:

Full time community schools for small unserved habitations

Mainstreaming of children through bridge courses of different duration

Specific strategies for special groups like child labour, street children, adolescent girls, girls belonging to certain backward communities, children of migrating families, etc.

Innovative programmes - the innovations can be in the areas of pedagogic practices, curriculum, programme management, textbooks and TLMs, etc.

All habitations not having a primary school within one kilometre and having a minimum of school age children, will be entitled to have an EGS type school. Children who have dropped out-of-school will have an opportunity to avail of bridge courses, aimed at their mainstreaming. The objective is to see the EGS and AIE as integral to the quest of UEE. The linkages with CRC/BRC/DIET/SCERT will be required for EGS and AIE.

The National Policy on Education
The National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 recognised that the school could not reach all children and a large and systematic programme of non formal education would be required for school dropouts, for children from habitations without schools, working children and girls who could not attend whole day schools. Thus NFE became an important component of the overall strategy for achievement of Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE). The NFE scheme was revised in 1987-88. While the focus continued to be on 10 educationally backward states, but it also included urban slums, hilly, tribal and desert areas and projects for working children in other states and Union Territories (UTs) as well.  A major portion of the NFE scheme is run by the state governments which set up NFE centres. One component of this scheme provides grants to Voluntary Agencies (VAs) directly from the central government for running of NFE centres and a third is for projects of experimental innovative nature by VAs .  

The Programme of Action (POA) 1992 outlined strategies for strengthening of the NFE scheme including:  

1. Setting up NFE centres based on a micro-planning exercise carried out for UEE.  

2. Central role for community by involving them in setting up of the centre, identification of the instructor and supervision of the NFE centre.  

3. Efforts to evolve different models of NFE programme for different target groups.

4. Adequate training and orientation of NFE instructors. 30 days initial training of instructors and 20 days in subsequent years etc.

5. Linkage with the formal school to facilitate lateral entry of the learners from the NFE stream.

6. Efforts to link non-formal courses with formal schools.

7. Adoption of learner-centered approach. The learning levels for the learners to be equivalent to the formal system.