State's elementary education in a shambles: CAG

Even though the Government spent `23,193.60 crore, the state of elementary education remained poor in Odisha in the last five years from 2009 to 2014, revealed the CAG report laid in the Assembly on Friday.It said the poor situation was mainly due to lack of oversight by the Schools and Mass Education Department and deficient planning and poor implementation of the provisions of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009.

Planning remained deficient due to non-preparation of perspective plan and non-setting of monitorable targets to fulfil the standards of infrastructure and availability of teachers. Grant of permission and recognition to non- Government primary and upper primary schools remained inefficient and ineffective as 1,544 such schools were unauthorisedly functioning in the State as of March 2014 though the RTE Act did not permit running of any unrecognised schools, the report revealed.

As of March 2014, 1,226 eligible habitations did not have any primary school (PS) within one kilometre while 201 habitations did not have any upper primary school (UPS) within three kilometres. The enrolment at elementary stage decreased from 66.21 lakh in 2009-10 to 63.88 lakh in 2013-14, indicating failure of Government/aided schools to attract students despite interventions like MDM, free supply of uniform and textbook.

Quality of elementary education was affected as 3,440 to 8,739 schools with 1.79 lakh to 3.88 lakh students were functioning with single teachers during 2009-14; 2,558 teacher posts in science and mathematics remained vacant for years; under-qualified teachers were continuing in PSs (20,471) and UPSs (936) and were not made professionally qualified despite the timeline set under the RTE Act being over since August 2014.

Basic infrastructure like classrooms, toilets, facility for safe and adequate drinking water as per scale prescribed in the RTE Act was not made available in schools though the required timeline expired since August 2012.While 33,499 to 50,400 teacher posts remained vacant during 2009-14, rationalisation of vacancies was not done and teacher-pupil ratio in some test checked schools remained as high as 1:187 and 1:272.

Administration of Grants-in-Aid (GlA) schools was deficient as GIA of `23.66 crore was paid to ineligible teachers of 629 primary/ UP schools.

While management of Mid-day Meal (MDM) scheme remained ineffective, MDM was served in 191 ineligible schools; MDM rice of 105.98 MT was misappropriated; management of fund remained poor due to advances of `252.29 crore remaining unadjusted/ unrecovered for years and blockage of `28.80 crore for years. Inspection and monitoring mechanism was poor, the report said.