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Section
VII
IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOL FACILITIES AND OTHER CIVIL WORKS
Community
participation should be the only means of undertaking any civil works in
improvement of school facilities. Experiments
in community participation under Lok Jumbish and under DPEP in many States
have been very encouraging and such experiments will be further carried out.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan would first of all try to mobilise
resources under Rural Employment Programme and other developmental schemes
for constructing school buildings. The
community would have to come forward to maintain school facilities if any
investment is proposed in a village. An annual support to the community for
repair and maintenance is envisaged under the SSA. The upper ceiling is Rs. 5000 per year, based on the actual need and the
willingness of the community to contribute. The Lok Jumbish Project has had significant success by adopting this
procedure.
The
allocation for civil works will not exceed
33% of the perspective and the Annual Plan. The elementary education
becoming an obligation of the state (including the local government), the
Panchayats could even be directed to prioritise construction of school
facilities where it does not exist.
The participation of the community in all civil work activities will
be mandatory in order to ensure a sense of ownership and
a departure from contractor driven approaches. Engagement of
contractors will not be allowed under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. School
Management Committees/ Village Education Committees/ Gram Panchayat
Committee on Education will have to carry out the civil works activities
through a transparent system of account keeping. The DPEP and Lok Jumbish
Project have developed effective community based approaches for civil works.
These will be mandatory in all Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan districts.
The principle of social audit could be accepted for minor
repairs. The School Management Committee/ Village Education Committee could
certify the maintenance and repair work under taken in a school. For larger
repair and maintenance as well as new construction, technical provisions
will be followed. The technical provisions however, have to be totally
demystified (as has been done under the Lok Jumbish Project) and the
communities' right to know the cost parameters has to be fully respected.
Efforts to improve the school environment by addition of a few
inexpensive internal and external elements will be made. New building
designs developed in Lok Jumbish and DPEP would be adapted to promote child
centred learning. Use of local materials and cost effective technologies
will be encouraged. A civil works innovation fund will be set up in each
state/UT to encourage experimentation with design. Repair and maintenance of
buildings will be given the top most priority.
A
large number of (more than 100) building designs for schools have been
developed in DPEP districts. These designs, apart from being attractive, are
child centred, functional and in tune with the new pedagogical concepts. The
publication called "Building
rural Primary schools" published by the Ed Cil and the building
construction manuals developed by the Lok Jumbish Project may be utilised by
all the States/ districts to develop their civil works plan. The
States may make use of designs already developed under DPEP/ Lok Jumbish
Project in their specific local contexts. Incorporation of child-friendly
internal and external elements will be mandatory in all the new construction
and repair works.
SSA
will encourage use of local construction of materials and low cost
technologies. This would require a large amount of capacity building,
including training of engineers and masons in these technologies. Apart from
the Technical Resource Group of DPEP, assistance of Resource institutions
like HUDCO may also be sought for this purpose.
There
will be a Civil Work innovation fund of Rupees fifty lakhs in each State.
This will be used for civil works innovations, demonstration buildings, and
capacity building.
Civil
works under SSA should start with a proper assessment of the infrastructure
requirement for each district. There need to be a school-wise compilation of
physical and monetary requirements. The attempt should be to find out the
minimum money required to provide adequate infrastructure to each school
including repairs, toilets, drinking water, boundary wall, etc. Provision of
additional classrooms is to be considered only after exploring possibility
of repairs and double shifts. Once the total requirement for the district is
obtained, one needs to find out how much of this requirement can be funded
through the on going schemes and therefore what is the gap that is required
to be funded through SSA.
There
should be a single agency in each district to manage all funds related to
school construction. Ideally, it should be an engineering cell in the
district team. All school infrastructure works should be executed by the
single agency.
Each
State must formulate a strategy for repair. The Rupees five thousand per
year available to a school for regular maintenance and repair could be used
to create a maintenance corpus in a school. The money will be credited to
the VEC and the VEC could decide to use only part of the funds and use the
rest to create a corpus. Community involvement is a must if the school
infrastructure has to be well maintained.
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