Secondary Education Management Information System (SEMIS)

Mass basic education has been given a priority in the country right from the time
of independence. However, mass education may not be complete without democratizing
access to and ensuring quality of secondary education. The developmental effects of
education generally take effect fully at the secondary level. Active participation in the
global knowledge economy, therefore, requires that a significant proportion of the labor
force in India be educated at least up to the secondary level. Not only that secondary
education acts as a highway to tertiary education but also opens up the windows to the
world of work. Its impact on reducing the incidences of HIV/AIDS is found to be
significant. Secondary education is critical for the development of the young people
during their adolescence, the most rapid phase of their physical, mental and emotional
growth. At the secondary level, values and attitudes formed at elementary education are
more firmly ingrained alongside the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

While the recent growth performance of India has generated much optimism, the
accompanying indicators of educational achievement do not seem to be very
encouraging. Although, India has been witnessing tremendous progress in elementary
education since the early 1990s, and has also emerged as an important player in the
worldwide information technology, it’s secondary and higher secondary education
continue to remain underdeveloped and neglected. The States generally decide on their
own secondary education system and the related policies within a national framework.
The reform initiatives of the States largely shape the development pattern of secondary
and higher secondary education in the country. While there is substantial variation across
States, the country’s public spending on secondary education is about 1.2% of the GDP.
Given the limited public resources, the private sector has largely influenced the pace of
growth of secondary education during the last two decades.

Participation rate in secondary education is far below that of elementary education

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secondary schools in the country increased from 7,416 in 1950-51 to 1, 52,049 in 2004-
05 and the total enrolment has gone up from 1.5 million in 1950-51 to 37 million in 2004-
05, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), which shows total enrolment in secondary stage
(IX-XII) as a percentage of the total population in the relevant age-group was only
39.91% in 2004-05. The GER for Classes IX-X (14-15 years) was 51.55%, and for
Classes XI-XII (16-17 years), it was 27.82% as on 30th September 2004 (MHRD, 2007).
In fact, according to the Seventh All India Educational Survey (NCERT, 2002), there
were only one-fifth as many secondary schools (those with grade 10 classes) as the
number of primary schools. It is likely that secondary school enrolment is low partly
because of lack of supply of schooling provisions, including inadequate provisions in the
existing schools. Besides, low participation rates, gender, regional and social divides are
most prominent at secondary level. The basic enabling conditions to make effective
teaching and learning happen are absent in most of the government and aided secondary
and higher secondary schools leading to serious concerns for raising and maintaining
standards.

Despite supply constraints, the demand for secondary school places is likely to
rise substantially in the coming years due to the increase in the turnover of graduates at
the elementary level as a consequence of implementation of several basic education
development programmes, including the SSA, and also partly because of the increasing
private returns to secondary education. The implementation of the externally funded
reform programmes in the primary education sector in the 1990s, and subsequently, the
‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) have led to a high transition rate of about 85% from class
VIII to IX, i.e. from elementary to secondary level, and it is expected that it would further
increase in the coming years.

It is heartening to note that recently, there has been a shift in the policy of the
Government of India with regard to development of school education, whereby,
compared to the previous years, secondary education has been accorded relatively higher
priority in the development agenda. The vision is to move towards universalization of
school education. At the same time, it is also acknowledged that it may not be possible to
fully universalize secondary education as the dropout rates at primary and upper primary

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levels hover around 28.49% from Classes I-V and 50.39% from Classes I-VIII. To
improve access, the target, however, is to provide a secondary school within 5-7
kilometers of any habitation during the Eleventh Plan period. It is envisaged to raise the
GER at the secondary level to 65% by the end of the 11th Plan period. The CABE
Committee on Universalization of Secondary Education (2005) has suggested that
secondary education should be made universal but not compulsory. Not only universal
enrolment, but universal retention and satisfactory quality of learning should also be
given priority at the secondary level. Accordingly, the MHRD, Government of India
keeping in view the need to make quality secondary education available, accessible and
affordable to all young persons has initiated dialogue with the State Governments and
UTs requesting them to take certain preparatory steps for universalization of access to
and improvement of quality of secondary education. All the State Governments and
Union Territories have been requested to constitute a high level Task Force to work out
comprehensive policies, plans and programmes for secondary education.

But the matter of the fact is that, even after recognizing secondary education as a
critical stage of school education, planned efforts in the country for its expansion and
quality improvement have largely been confined to discrete Centrally/State sponsored
schemes. From the 1990s onwards, with the increased policy emphasis on ‘education for
all’, secondary education has been left wayside. In fact, lack of focus has also affected the
development approach adopted by most of the States for expansion and quality
improvement of secondary education. Decentralized sectoral planning of secondary and
higher secondary education is almost absent in the States. Unfortunately, when planning
is very much necessary to make the best use of limited resources available for
development of education, the same has not been attempted in a professional manner.
Unlike the elementary education sector, the basic enabling conditions such as creating the
necessary database and institutional arrangements for planning and monitoring of
secondary education have not been created in most of the States. Increasing presence of
the private sector in the secondary and higher secondary education has also made it all
the more important to make planned efforts for democratizing access and making public
institutions competitive.

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 Although efforts are being made by the States for expansion and quality
improvement of secondary education, there is little information available on the current
status and development concerns. It is, therefore, necessary to undertake diagnostic
exercises for assessing the current status and to identify priority areas for planned
intervention to improve access, participation and quality of learning. In addition, the need
is to create sustainable competencies and institutional arrangements at the sub-national
levels required for planning and implementation of development initiatives in the
secondary education sector. It may be reiterated that the States are yet to adopt a sector-
wide approach for planning for expansion and quality improvement of secondary
education. Given the strategy of decentralization, the development of district level
secondary education plan is essential for identifying and addressing issues and problems
of expansion and quality improvement. It hardly needs any mention that the parameters
and methodology of developing district level secondary education plans will be different
from that of the district elementary education plans. It is high time now the States initiate
the process of creating the enabling conditions including a comprehensive database for
developing secondary education plans at the district level. It may be a long and tedious
process as the capacity building in the states is yet to reach even a minimum threshold
level.

Until now, the role of the Central Government in the development of secondary
education has been relatively limited. It was financing the national level bodies like
NCERT, NIOS, KVS, NVS, etc. and assisting States through select centrally-sponsored
schemes. On an average, the Central Government was spending around 12% of the total
expenditure on secondary education. Now, in order to address the emerging challenges,
the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India is envisaging
playing a larger role in the development and universalization of secondary education in
the country. It has proposed to introduce a centrally-assisted programme called the
“Scheme for Universal Access and Quality at the Secondary Stage (SUCCESS)”
during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period.

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 States are expected to undertake certain basic reforms/activities for receiving
financial assistance from the Central Government under the Scheme. One of the
important reforms envisaged is that States should undertake detailed school mapping and
streamline the secondary education database besides creating necessary institutional
arrangements at the State and district levels for planning and management of such
development programmes. Creating necessary database at the district level and
generating state level baseline status reports of secondary and higher secondary education
are, in fact, the necessary condition for effective design of SUCCESS and planning and
implementation of the proposed reform initiatives.

In the above context and on the request of the MHRD, Government of India to
initiate the process of mapping provisions across secondary and higher secondary schools
in a meaningful way for the purpose of institutionalizing both creation and maintenance
of a comprehensive database at the district, state and national levels, the National
University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) organized five
Regional Workshops on Mapping Provisions in Secondary and Higher Secondary
Schools in the five regions of the country namely North-Eastern, Northern, Eastern,
Southern and Western region.

The basic objectives of the regional workshops were to orient the State Resource
Teams of the participating States about the mapping exercise and related tools and
techniques. Besides, the workshops also aimed at collectively reflecting on the modalities
for operationalising the mapping exercise for preparing State-wise Status Reports of
Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. The regional workshops were expected
to provide important inputs for designing the mapping exercise and defining concretely
the role of the participating States/UTs, the Centre and the NUEPA in creating and
sustaining a decentralized Secondary Education Management Information System
(SEMIS) in the country.

In order to develop SEMIS, the Data Capture Formats (DCFs) developed,

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from all the recognized secondary and higher secondary schools. A web-based software
has already been developed by NUEPA which will be used by all states and UTs for
developing computerized Secondary Education Management Information System
(SEMIS). The tabulation, analysis and interpretation of data thus collected will be used
for preparing the status report of secondary education which will, for all practical
purposes, be a diagnostic study in order to plan for secondary education in coming years.