Tannuka Juneja
The Minister of State for Education, Annapurna Devi, in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, has said that the Department of School Education and Literacy (DOSEL) of the Ministry of Education is implementing the Samgar Shiksha scheme, which is part of the RTE Act, 2009. Implemented from 2018-19, the scheme has been ensuring equality and inclusion at all levels of schooling in the states and UTs.
According to data available on the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) and UDISE plus, gross enrollment rate (GER) of girls for 2018-19 and 2019-20 is the highest in all the levels of school education. The year-wise details of the scheme are as under:
| Year | Primary | Upper Primary | Secondary | Higher Secondary |
| 2018-19 | 101.78 | 88.54 | 76.93 | 50.84 |
| 2019-20 | 103.69 | 90.46 | 77.83 | 52.40 |
Bridging gender and social category gaps at all levels of school education is one of the major objectives of Samagra Shiksha. Its other objective is to ensure greater participation of girls in education.
To increase girls’ participation, many interventions have been taken. These include opening of schools in the neighbourhood to make school access easier for girls, free uniforms and textbooks for them till class 8, additional teachers, including women teachers, residential quarters for teachers in remote or hilly areas, stipend to CWSN girls from class 1 to 12, separate toilets for girls, teachers’ sensitisation programmes to boost girls’ participation, and gender-sensitive teaching-learning materials, including textbooks, among others.
Samagra Shiksha emphasises on reducing gender gap at all levels of school education. There is a provision of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) under the scheme. KGBVs are residential schools from class 6 to 12 for girls from disadvantaged groups such as SC, ST, OBC, minorities and below poverty line (BPL). A total of 5,627 KGBVs have been sanctioned under Samagra Shiksha as of February 28, 2022, in which 6,65,130 girls have been enrolled.
