World Bank’s STARS to improve school education in six States

News: The World Bank has approved an assistance of $500 million under ‘Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States Program(STARS)’ for India.

Facts:

• Aim: To improve quality and governance of school education in six Indian states.
• Coverage: Six states included in the project are Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan.
• Implementation: The project will be implemented through the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the flagship scheme of India.
• Features of the programme:
  • Focusing directly on the delivery of education services at the state, district and sub district levels by providing customized local-level solutions towards school improvement.
  • Improve the learning assessment systems, strengthen classroom instruction, and remediation, facilitate school-to-work transition and strengthen governance and decentralized management.
  • To address “the ‘learning outcome’ challenge and help students better prepare for the jobs of the future.

Additional Facts:

• Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan: It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme launched as an integrated scheme for school education extending from pre-school to class XII to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels of school education.
  • It subsumes the three Schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and Teacher Education(TE).