UPSC CSE Mains Syllabus: GS-2- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Atmanirbhar Bharat:

World Bank’s STARS project – issues:

What is the STARS project:

The World Bank Board of Executive Directors today approved a $500 million – Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States Program (STARS) to improve the quality and governance of school education in six Indian states. Some 250 million students (between the age of 6 and 17) in 1.5 million schools, and over 10 million teachers will benefit from the program.

The STARS program builds on the long partnership between India and the World Bank (since 1994), for strengthening public school education and to support the country’s goal of providing ‘Education for All’

Prior to STARS, the Bank had provided a total assistance of more than $3 billion towards this goal.

India has, over the years, made significant strides in improving access to education across the country; between 2004-05 and 2018-19, STARS will support India’s renewed focus on addressing the ‘learning outcome’ challenge and help students better prepare for the jobs of the future – through a series of reform initiatives. These include:

  1. Focusing more directly on the delivery of education services at the state, district and sub district levelsby providing customized local-level solutions towards school improvement.
  2. Addressing demands from stakeholders, especially parents, for greater accountability and inclusion by producing better data to assess the quality of learning; giving special attention to students from vulnerable sections – with over 52 percent (as a weighted average) of children in the government-run schools in the six project states belonging to vulnerable sections, such as Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and minority communities; and delivering a curriculum that keeps pace with the rapidly evolving needs of the job market.
  3. Equipping teachers to manage this transformation by recognizing that teachers are central to achieving better learning outcomes. The program will support individualized, needs-based training for teachers that will give them an opportunity to have a say in shaping training programs and making them relevant to their teaching needs.
  4. Investing more in developing India’s human capital needsby strengthening foundational learning for children in classes 1 to 3 and preparing them with the cognitive, socio-behavioral and language skills to meet future labor market needs. 

At the national level, through the Samagra Shiksha, and in partnership with the states of Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, and Rajasthan, STARS will also help improve learning assessment systems; strengthen classroom instruction and remediation; facilitate school-to-work transition; and strengthen governance and decentralized management.

In line with the Sustainable Development Goal for education (SDG 4),. India’s participation in PISA is a historic strategic decision by the Government of India to obtain data on how India’s learning levels compare globally. STARS will assist India in this major step forward.

. However, for many children, secondary education is the stage when they leave school and enter the workforce. Under STARS, each state is expected to not only stabilize this downward trend but also improve the completion rate for secondary education.

Physical, financial and human resources:

Discretion to innovate:

Building trust:

Issues with the STARS:

First, it fails to address the basic capacity issues:

  1. Major vacancies across the education system from District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs)
  2. district and block education offices
  3. teachers in schools, all remain remain unaddressed.
  4. Without capable and motivated faculty, teacher education and training cannot be expected to improve.
  5. Similarly, at the block level, an already overburdened bureaucracy cannot be expected to perform miracles without a substantial increase in trained manpower, support staff and other forms of institutional support.

Second, the Bank ignores that decentralising decision-making requires the devolution of funds and real decision-making power.

The issue of discretion hinges crucially on trust – the third, important element requiring attention if state capability is to be enhanced.

Fourth, measurement is seen as a way to improve performance.

Lastly, outsourcing basic governance functions by “expanding private initiatives” and “reducing government tasks” will not make education “more relevant to local needs” or “democratically promote people’s participation by empowering local authorities” as stated in the project document.

What is needed:

Source:” The Hindu“.

POSSIBLE UPSC CSE MAINS QUESTION:

While engagement with non-state actors is necessary to develop education, the primacy of the state as an education provider is non-negotiable in a nation like India. Analyse.