In Andhra Pradesh there are 60,000 schools where 73.37 lakh children are enrolled and 2.86 lakh teachers working in all the schools under various managements among which, 4 lakh children in 5,009 schools and 16,000 teachers are from Chittoor district. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is the joint initiative of the Government of India with the
State Government to achieve the goal of universalisation of Elementary Education, along with quality education.

The objective of e-School Monitor is to track the actual statistics in real time for providing better administration in the functioning of the school. These included: tracking actual children attending schools; actual teacher attendance; identification of out-of-school children or never enrolled; status of drinking water and toilets; proper utilisation of funds and balances; and, implementation of Mid Day Meal programme.

Challenges

• 20 per cent of irregularity in children attendance.
• Most of the teachers were not maintaining Year Plan or Unit Plan.
• Implementation of innovative activities was not up to the mark.
• Usage of Teaching Learning Material was low.
• Class works note corrections, homework notes correction practice was not active.
• Libraries were under-utilised.
• Poor community involvement in the academic activities.

Solution

A mobile application, which is geo-tagged, was developed and loaded with data of clusters and schools attached to cluster – enrollment, teacher and physical facilities, viz., drinking water and toilets.

Cluster Resource Persons who are deployed for monitoring of Schools used the application. They are located at Cluster Resource Centers (CRCs) – and monitor the Primary, Upper Primary and High Schools in the catchment area of CRC. On an average 15 to 20 Schools will be under one CRC jurisdiction. Totally 351 Cluster Resource Persons are working in Chittoor District.

Outcomes

By implementing this solution, factual figures are found out in terms of enrollment, attendance and funds position. From a high of 98 per cent in student attendance during the manual system, the App reports have shown it to be 83 per cent. Similarly the teacher attendance as per App reports is 86 per cent as against 98 per cent as reported manually. There was no assessment of status of drinking water, which is now found to be 14.5 per cent purified and the rest ordinary. There are 98.1 per cent schools serving meals as per menu as against 100 per cent reported earlier. Also the percentage of students consuming meal is reported to be 80 per cent as against 92 per cent earlier.

The App has galvanised the unique and exclusive programme of “Sankalpam” in Chittoor district. It has bolstered the aspects of quality teaching, performance of teachers guided by responsibility factor, grasping levels of students, and activity-based learning in the classrooms. Apart from leading to improvements in the attendance of students and teachers, App has helped in identifying school level problems and finding solutions.

It has helped in close monitoring of schools with increased student, teacher accountability, providing quality and nutritious food through Mid Day Meal Programme, proper functioning of toilets and availability of safe drinking water in schools. By viewing various MIS reports, the Mandal Level and District Level officers visiting schools have solved various problems and rectified lapses through focused monitoring.

The project was designed in such a way that its been implemented with minimum usage of funds. Only Rs 95,000 were spent on development, maintenance of App and Website.