Educational Management Information System in India
INTRODUCTION
There are various agencies involved in the collection and dissemination of statistics on school education. At the national level, there are three main agencies that collect statistics on education on regular basis. They are (a) Planning, Monitoring and Statistics Division, Department of Education, MHRD on annual basis for all sectors of school education; (b) University Grants Commission on higher education; and (c) National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on school education through occasional surveys. In addition, there are agencies, which collect information from households. The Census of India publications provides information on levels of educational attainment of population and age-education classification of children in the age-group 5-14 years. In addition, the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) also collect statistics on educational variables occasionally through household sample surveys.
Barring Census of India, most of the other agencies generate data with State/UT as a basic unit of consolidation but hardly any data is disseminated at the district level. Only in case of the MHRD, selected district level information was also disseminated on quinquennial basis for a short period. The UGC compiles data according to university area, whereas NCERT collects data at the district level but releases only state-specific information. The latest sixth survey was conducted in 1993 with September 30 as its date of reference. The dissemination of district-specific survey data is left to the discretion of the states. All the states do not bring out publications that contain district-specific data. The Directorate of Education, Bureau of Economics and Statistics, Directorate of Economics etc. in a State/UT also brings out statistical abstracts and other publications but the data that they disseminate is not uniform and the year also varies from state to state. Thus, it can safely be concluded that proper mechanism for dissemination of district-specific information is not in existence in most part of the country.
Sporadic attempts have been made to develop computerized educational management information system with an aim to collect and disseminate district-specific information among which the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) is the most prominent one. One of the important aims of the recently launched SSA is to develop educational management information system for which data capture formats have been evolved and infrastructure created at the district level in the office of the District Project Coordinator. All the project districts have been provided with adequate hardwares and MIS softwares. The data capture format is divided into nine parts. Through the first part, school location particulars are envisaged to collect which includes village name and ward number, distance from block headquarters, number of non-formal education centres in a village and whether the school is governed by a voluntary organization or it is a Government school. This part also includes information relating to Total Literacy Campaigns and Post Literacy Facilities and whether a Village Education Committee is constituted in the village. The other important items included in the format are school particulars, teachers in position, equipments and facilities in terms of adequacy. So far as the information relating to enrolment and repeaters is concerned, all that required for planning at district level including the age-grade matrix is envisaged to collect. However, rural/urban distribution will not be made available.
By the end of 2003, the coverage of DISE has extended to about 460 of the 593 districts of the country. these districts are spread over 18 DPEP states. It is expected that all the districts of the country would adopt DISE in a year or two. The Government of India decided that the manual collection of information system will gradually be replaced by the DISE and the statistics generated by it will be accorded the status of the Official Statistics. Recently ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: WHERE DO WE STAND, ANALYTICAL REPORT 2006 was also launched. Barring a few numeric indicators, most of the indicators required for efficient planning at the district level is now available through the DISE. The number of schools, enrolment, teachers, pupil-teacher ratio, literacy rates etc. is available over a period of time. however, district-wise information is not available from the MHRD sources. But information on school education is available from the All-India Educational Surveys but the same is not properly disseminated and it is latest available for 2002-03..
The computation of many of the identified indicators need age-specific population which is generally not readily available at the district level and for that propose population projection exercises would have to be initiated. Even though the raw data is available, it is not an easy task to compute indicators especially when the number of districts is more than 600. Because of DPEP and SSA interventions, awareness about indicators and its use in planning elementary education has significantly improved in the recent past. It is happy to note that all the districts across the country now develop annual elementary education plans which are primarily based on the DISE data.