Village Education Committees

Village/school level committees have been constituted under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in all States/UTs. The nomenclature of the committees varies from State to State: they are known as Village Education Committee (VEC), School Development and Management Committee (SDMC) School Monitoring Committee (SMC)/ Vidyalaya Shiksha Samiti (VSS), Vidyalaya Kalyan Samiti (VKS), Jan Bhagidari and Vikas Samiti (JBVS), etc. in different States. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE), Act, 2009 has been operationalised with effect from 1st April 2010. The RTE Act, 2009 provides for the constitution of School Management Committees (SMC) consisting of elected representatives of the local authority, parents or guardians of children admitted in schools and teachers. The Act also provides that at least three-fourth of members of SMCs shall be parents or guardians with proportionate representation to parents and guardians of children belonging to disadvantaged groups and weaker sections, and that fifty per cent of the members of SMCs shall be women. Under the RTE Act, 2009 the SMCs have been assigned the function of monitoring the working of the school, preparing and recommending the school development plan and monitoring the utilization of the grants received from the appropriate Government or local authority or any other source.

Under SSA community awareness is provided in the form of community training and community mobilization. The SSA norms provide for an allocation of 0.5% of the district outlay towards Community Mobilization. The funds allocated for these activities in the Annual Work Plan & Budget of States during 2011-12 are Rs. 481.84 crore for community training and Rs. 129.28 crore for community mobilization.

This information was given by Dr. D. Purandeswari, Minister of State for Human Resource in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

MV/GK
(Release ID :77433)