OBJECTIVES AND ORGANISATION OF THE FOURTH ALL-INDIA EDUCATIONAL SURVEY
3.1 Objectives THE Objectives of the Fourth Survey were highly influenced by the top priority accorded to Universalisation of Elementary Education and the concept of rolling plan which provided for annual review of the performance and shift in priorities on this basis. For this purpose it was imperative that some basic information was provided. Although the Third All-India Educational Survey had been conducted as on 31.12.1973 a lot of changes had taken place since then with opening of many new schools and upgrading of existing ones. Hence the data of Third Survey had to be revised and updated. In the Third Survey information had been collected on all aspects of education in great detail. Hence it was not felt necessary to cover all those items in the Fourth Survey again from the point of view of economy and time required for producing the results of the survey. The Ministry of Education and Social Welfare and the Planning Commission, therefore, decided that only a mini-survey covering a limited number of items be taken up this time. Hence the Fourth All-India Educational Survey was undertaken with the following main objectives :
(i) To assess the present position of the provision of educational facilities at various stages of school education in respect of coverage of school-going population, the distance to be covered by a child to have access to the school, enrolment of children belonging to weaker sections of the society and girls enrolment;
(ii) To assess the availability of minimum basic facilities in the school such as building, furniture, library, equipment, health and sanitation and incentives;
(iii) To prepare block maps with existing schooling facilities and to identify clusters of habitations where institutions ought to be opened or existing schools ought to be upgraded; and
(iv) To prepare the ground for conducting quarterly monitoring of information relating to school attendence, and systematic updating of the data relating to enrolment and other educational facilities provided in institutions at block level annually.
3.2 Items of Information To fulfil these objectives, it was necessary to carry out :
(a) Enumeration of every distinct habitation;
(b) Enumeration of every primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary school/intermediate/pre-university/junior college;
(c) Enumeration of every habitation with and without educational facilities at primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary stages and collection of data on the following main items :
(i) In the case of habitations without schooling facilities at these stages, the distance at which these facilities are available and also habitations under various population slabs;
(ii) Schooling facilities at various school stages in habitations predominantly populated by Scheduled Castes;
(iii) Schooling facilities at various school stages in habitations predominantly populated by Scheduled Tribes;
(iv) Proportion of Scheduled Caste population in villages and schooling facilities in them;
10 FOURTH ALL-INDIA EDUCATIONAL SURVEY
(v) Proportion of Scheduled Tribe population in villages and schooling facilities in them;
(vi) Class-wise and age-wise enrolment of pupils at various school stages;
(vii) Age-wise enrolment of pupils belonging to Scheduled Castes and, Scheduled Tribes;
(viii) Qualifications of teachers (stage-wise) working in schools ; and
(ix) Proportion of girls in schools.
3.3Concepts and definitions For the purpose of the survey various terms had to be properly defined to avoid confusion and misinterpretation by the respondents. The respondents for these schedules were either the village officers (Patwaris) or heads of the institutions. For their convenience the definitions of various terms used in the survey schedules were provided alongwith instructions for filling the schedules. All these terms were similarly defined in earlier surveys also. The main concepts and definitions of the terms used in this survey are given below.
(i) Habitation : A habitation is a distinct cluster of houses with a local name. It is a centre where people live in compact and contiguous manner. The census reports use the term village in regard to 'revenue village'. According to the census definition a village represents a parcel of land, the boundaries of which are defined and settled by revenue survey or by cadastral survey. A revenue village may consist of one compact habitation or a number of habitations. One of the habitations may bear the name of the village itself. These habitations may be separated from each other by a long distance. For the purpose of provision of educational facilities, revenue village with its scattered habitations over long distance (sometimes over a number of kilometres) cannot be a suitable unit for location of schools. For the purpose of location of schools, a distinct house cluster (habitation) is the appropriate unit. As in the earlier surveys, in this survey also a habitation has been treated as the unit for consideration of provision of schooling facilities. A revenue village having no population at all will be termed as 'Bechirag' or 'Deserted'.
(ii) Village : This term is used in the same way as in census. It is a parcel of land the boundaries of which are defined and settled for revenue purposes.
(iii) Urban area : All areas which were identified as urban at the time of 1971 Census or subsequently notified to be so are to be treated as urban.
(iv) Rural area : Areas which are not urban shall be treated as rural.
(v) School stages : The education pattern differs from State to State. Various combinations of classes of the school system constitute primary, middle, secondary and higher secondary stages. Some of the States and Union Territories have provision of junior colleges, independent PUC, and intermediate classes beyond the high school stage. In this survey these classes/colleges will be considered alongwith the higher secondary stage.
In most of the States and Union Territories the primary stage comprises of classes I-V but in few States, e.g. Bihar, Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal classes I-IV, constitute this stage. Similarly, at middle stage the set of classes may include V-VI, V-VII and VI-VIII. At the secondary and higher secondary stages also, there is variation in the number of classes covered.
(vi) Sections : The group of classes at primary stage in a school constitutes a primary section ; classes at the middle constitute the middle section ; and classes at the secondary and higher secondary stages constitute secondary and higher secondary sections, respec- tively.
A school with classes I-X has three sections-one primary section, one middle section and one secondary section. Similarly, if there is a habitation with a school for classes I-IV and another school with classes I-VII, then for the purpose of enumeration, this habitation has two primary sections and one middle section.
(vii) Block : Block in this survey connotes 'The block under the community project administration'. In this survey the block is the unit for collection and compilation of data. In the States where the scheme of community development blocks is not in vogue, tahsil/taluk will be the unit for collection and compilation of data.
(viii) Recognised school : A recognised school is one in which the course (s) of study followed is (are) prescribed or recognised by Government. (Central/ State) or a University or a Board constituted by law or by any other agency authorised in this behalf by Central or State Government and which satisfies one or more of the authorities e.g. Directorate of Education, Municipal Board, Secondary Board, etc., and sends candidates for public examination, if any.
(ix) Management : The authority which runs a school determines type of its management. It may be government, local body or private body receiving government aids, or not receiving government aid. The schools may, therefore, be clssified accord to
OBJECTIVES AND ORGANISATION OF THE FOURTH ALL-INDIA EDUCATIONAL SURVEY 11
management as government schools, local body schools, private aided schools and private unaided schools.
All schools run by Municipal Corporations, Municipal Committees, Notified Area Committees, Zila Parishads, Panchayat Samitis, Cantonment Boards, etc., will be treated as local body schools.
A private aided school is one which is run by a private organisation or agency and receive maintenance grant from the government or from a local body.
A private unaided school in one which is managed by a private organisation or agency and does not receive grant either from the government or from a local body.
(x) Trained teacher : A trained teacher is one who has successfully undergone a course of teacher training.
(xi) Distance : The distance between two habitations or between a school and a habitation is the convenient walking distance between the central points of the two habitations, or the school and the central point of a habitation.
If there are two habitations and the aerial distance or the distance as the crow flies is one km but the actual convenient walking distance by road or path is 1.5 km than the distance between the two habitations will be the walking distance i.e. 1.5 km. If there are two habitations on the opposite sides of a stream than the distance between the two habitations will be actual convenient walking distance across a bridge and not distance across the stream.
3.4 Organisation of the survey The survey covered all the States and Union Territories in the country. At the national level, the National Council of Educational Research and Training was responsible for providing the academic and technical guidance to the States for the smooth conduct of the survey. At the State level State Survey Units were set up in each State and Union Territory except Lakshadweep for which National Council of Educational Research and Training directly conducted the survey. In the States and Union Territories the Director of Education, Director of Public Instruction/ Commissioner of Public Instruction acted as ex- officio Director of Survey.
Coming to the district level, the District Survey Officers were responsible for organising of the survey with the active collaboration of District Education Officers/Deputy Directors of Education/District Inspectors of Schools/Zila Parishad Officers according to the designations used in the States. At the block/tahsil level, the data was collected by the Block Education Officers (or his equivalent) under the supervision of District Survey Officers. The two forms (Village Information Form and School Information Form) were directly canvassed and tabulated at the block level. These forms are given in the Appendix. Next, these block tables were consolidated into district tables. Then, with the help of district tables, the state tables were prepared at the State level. Finally, the national tables were prepared from consolidated state tables received from all the States and Union Territories. The present report is based on the consolidated data contained in these national tables.
An additional form seeking information about enrolment and attendance in all schools having primary or middle classes according to the State pattern of education was devised for the purpose of quarterly monitoring. The Block Education Officers had to complete this form once in three months, after consolidating the information from all the schools of the block, and then they had to send the same to the National Informatics Centre, New Delhi, through NCERT, for consolidation. On the basis of the monitoring of quarterly enrolment- attendance, the National Informatics Centre would submit its own report to each State and Union Territory as well as to the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare. As such no findings relating to this monitoring programme are included in this report.