Moving to make elementary education free in the real sense, the Government has decided to take care of all school expenses of a child, not just fees and mid-day meals.Clearing the proposal under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), PM Manmohan Singh wants all school expenses—textbooks, stationery, public transport, uniform, meals—paid by the Government.The proposal paper has been sent to the Ministry of Human Resource Development for comments. Sources said that this is a mere formality since the PM, heading the SSA, has made it clear that he wants to make the term ‘‘universalisation of primary education’’ more meaningful. ‘‘There should be an unambiguous answer to the question ‘What is a school?’ Today, it signifies anything from a gathering under the sky, with or without teacher/blackboard, to an air-conditioned multi-building campus. Schools, and their types, should be unambiguously defined, perhaps as part of the National Building Construction Code, to bring about standardisation of structures and facilities,’’ states the proposal paper.To ensure increased teaching time, it suggests that teachers be freed of cooking and distributing mid-day meals; they should perform administrative duties after teaching hours — for an honorarium.‘‘Teachers teach only 50 per cent of the time as they also perform administrative duties like salary bill preparation, disbursement, school office functions, state-sponsored surveys, etc.,’’ the paper states.‘‘Moreover, tasking teachers with surveys and other government work gives an impression that the State itself does not give respect to teaching time,’’ it says.One of the methods identified to free teachers from mid-day meals duty is to retain cooks-cum-instructor for schools, on contract basis. ‘‘While they will cook food, relieving regular teachers from this task, they will also impart vocational training in cookery. No extra expenditure is to be incurred with the finance coming from existing funds sanctioned as cooking cost,’’ says the paper. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
