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GS Paper: GS2-13.Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

  • Annual State of Education Report (ASER) Wave 1, 2020

    The ASER Wave 1 Survey was recently released since the COVID-19 crisis interrupted this years’ trajectory.

    Practice question for mains:

    Q.Discuss the efficacy of the One-Nation- One-Board System and its limitations.

    About ASER Survey

    • This is an annual survey (published by education non-profit Pratham ) that aims to provide reliable estimates of children’s enrolment and basic learning levels for each district and state in India.
    • ASER has been conducted every year since 2005 in all rural districts of India. It is the largest citizen-led survey in India.
    • It is also the only annual source of information on children’s learning outcomes available in India.

    How is the survey conducted?

    • ASER tools and procedures are designed by ASER Centre, the research and assessment arm of Pratham.
    • The survey itself is coordinated by ASER Centre and facilitated by the Pratham network. It is conducted by close to 30,000 volunteers from partner organisations in each district.
    • All kinds of institutions partner with ASER: colleges, universities, NGOs, youth groups, women’s organisations, self-help groups and others.
    • The ASER model has been adapted for use in several countries around the world: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Pakistan, Mali and Senegal.

    Assessment parameters

    • Unlike most other large-scale learning assessments, ASER is a household-based rather than school-based survey.
    • This design enables all children to be included – those who have never been to school or have dropped out, as well as those who are in government schools, private schools, religious schools or anywhere else.
    • In each rural district, 30 villages are sampled. In each village, 20 randomly selected households are surveyed.
    • Information on schooling status is collected for all children living in sampled households who are in the age group 3-16.
    • Children in the age group 5-16 are tested in basic reading and basic arithmetic. The same test is administered to all children.
    • The highest level of reading tested corresponds to what is expected in Std 2; in 2012 this test was administered in 16 regional languages.
    • In recent years, this has included household size, parental education, and some information on household assets.

    Key Findings

    1.Enrollments:

    • 5.5% of rural children are not currently enrolled for the 2020school year, up from 4% in 2018.
    • This difference is the sharpest among the youngest children (6 to 10) where 5.3% of rural children had not yet enrolled in school in 2020, in comparison to just 1.8% in 2018.
    • Due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic, families are waiting for the physical opening of schools to enrol their youngest children, with about 10% of six-year-olds not in school.
    • Among 15-16 year-olds, however, enrollment levels are slightly higher than in 2018.
    • The proportion of boys enrolled in government schools has risen from 62.8% in 2018 to 66.4% in 2020, while for girls, that number has gone up from 70% to 73% in the corresponding period.
    • Patterns show a slight shift toward government schools, with private schools seeing a drop in enrolment in all age groups.
    • The Centre has now permitted States to start reopening schools if they can follow Covid-19 safety protocols but the majority of the country’s 25 crore students are still at home.

    2.Availability of Smartphones:

    • Among enrolled children, 61.8% live in families that own at least one smartphone which was merely 36.5% in 2018.
    • About 11% of families bought a new phone after the lockdown, of which 80% were smartphones.
    • WhatsApp is by far the most popular mode of transmitting learning materialsto students, with 75% of students receiving input via this app.

    3.Availability of Learning Material:

    • Overall more than 80% of children said they had textbooks for their current grade.
    • This proportion was higher among students enrolled in government schools (84.1%) than in private ones (72.2%).
    • In Bihar, less than 8% got such materials from their schools, along with 20% in West Bengal, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
    • More than 80% of rural children in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Gujarat received such input.

    4.Learning Activities:

    • Most children (70.2%) did some form of a learning activity through material shared by tutors or family members themselves, with or without regular input.
    • 11% had access to live online classes, and 21% had videos or recorded classes, with much higher levels in private schools.
    • About 60% studied from their textbooks and 20% watched classes broadcast on TV.

    Suggestions

    • Fluid Situation: When schools reopen, it will be important to continue to monitor who goes back to school as well as to understand whether there is learning lossas compared to previous years.
    • Building on and Strengthening Family Support: Parents’ increasing levels of education can be integrated into planning for learning improvement, as advocated by National Education Policy, 2020. Reaching parents at the right level is essential to understand how they can help their children and older siblings also play an important role.
    • Hybrid Learning: As children do a variety of different activities at home, effective ways of hybrid learning need to be developed which combine traditional teaching-learning with newer ways of “reaching-learning”.
    • Assessment of Digital Modes and Content: In order to improve digital content and delivery for the future, an in-depth assessment of what works, how well it works, who it reaches, and who it excludes is needed.
    • Mediating the Digital Divide: Children from families who had low education and also did not have resources like smartphones had less access to learning opportunities. However, even among such households, there is evidence of effort with family members trying to help and schools trying to reach them. These children will need even more help than others when schools reopen.

    Way Forward

    • Covid-19 has left the nation with deep economic distress and uncertainty over school-reopenings and thrown open new challenges in every sector.
    • The nationally representative sample highlighted the role played by the families where everyone in the family supported children regardless of their education levels.
    • This strength needs to be leveraged by reaching out to more students and reducing the distance between schools and homes.

  • What is ‘Infodemic’ Management?

    Managing the “infodemic” has been a serious challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic, says a Chief Scientist at World Health Organization (WHO).

    Try this question for mains:

    Q.‘Infodemic’ management these days has become a greater challenge than the actual course of pandemic management. Discuss.

    Defining Infodemic

    • Infodemic implies too much information, including false or misleading information, particularly on social media.
    • It has led to confusion, risk-taking and ultimately mistrust towards governments and the public health response.

    WHO framework for infodemics

    • The WHO has a framework for managing the coronavirus infodemic.
    • Infodemiology is now acknowledged by public health organizations and the WHO as an important emerging scientific field and critical area of practice during a pandemic.
    • From the perspective of being the first “infodemiolgist” who originally coined the term almost two decades ago, the author posts four pillars of infodemic management:
    1. Information monitoring (infoveillance)
    2. Building eHealth Literacy and science literacy capacity
    3. Encouraging knowledge refinement and quality improvement processes such as fact-checking and peer-review
    4. Accurate and timely knowledge translation, minimizing distorting factors such as political or commercial influences

  • Ghar Tak Fibre Scheme

    The government’s ambitious ‘Ghar Tak Fibre’ scheme — which aims to connect all the villages with high-speed internet — is off to a slow start in poll-bound Bihar.

    Note the features of FTTH connections. They make a perfect case for a statement based prelims question. Also, try this PYQ:

    Q.Consider the following statements regarding optical fibres:

    1. A layer called the cladding, which has a refractive index more than that of the core, surrounds the core of the optical fibre.
    2. Light is propagated in an optical fibre by refraction and internal reflection.

    Which of the above statements is/are correct?

    (a) 1 only

    (b) 2 only

    (c) Both 1 and 2

    (d) Neither 1 nor 2

    Ghar Tak Fibre scheme

    • The Scheme will be implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
    • It aims to connect all 45,945 villages of Bihar with high-speed optical fibre internet by 31st March 2021.
    • Under the scheme, Bihar has to provide at least five fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connections per village and at least one WiFi hotspot per village.

    What is FTTH?

    • Fiber to the home (FTTH), also called fibre to the premises (FTTP), is the installation and use of optical fibre from a central point directly to individual buildings such as residences, apartment buildings and businesses to provide high-speed internet access.
    • FTTH dramatically increases connection speeds available to computer users compared with technologies now used in most places.
    • FTTH promises connection speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps).

  • Ayushman Sahakar Scheme

    The Agriculture Ministry has rolled out the Ayushman Sahakar Scheme to assist cooperatives in the creation of healthcare infrastructure in the country.

    Can you find the peculiarity of this scheme? Yes. It’s the Agriculture and not the Health Ministry.

    Ayushman Sahakar Scheme

    • The scheme is formulated by the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), the apex autonomous development finance institution under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.
    • The scheme would give a boost to the provision of healthcare services by cooperatives.
    • It specifically covers establishment, modernization, expansion, repairs, renovation of hospital and healthcare and education infrastructure.

    Why need such a scheme?

    • There is a huge need for medical and nursing education in rural areas. But the problem is a lack of infrastructure.
    • Co-ops find it difficult to access credit for such projects as banks may not give them loans for non-agricultural purposes.

    Financing the scheme

    • NCDC would extend term loans to prospective cooperatives to the tune of Rs 10000 Crore in the coming years.
    • Any Cooperative Society with a suitable provision in its byelaws to undertake healthcare-related activities would be able to access the NCDC fund.
    • NCDC assistance will flow either through the State Governments/ UT Administrations or directly to the eligible cooperatives.
    • Apart from working capital and margin money to meet operational requirements, the scheme will also provide interest subvention of 1% to women majority cooperatives.

  • AIDS & India

    The article highlights the achievement in the fight against AIDS. Most significant are the achievements in the prevention of transmission from mother-to-child.

    Significant gains

    • As per recently released 2019 HIV estimates by the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO)/Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with the technical support of UNAIDS there has been a 66.1% reduction in new HIV infections among children and a 65.3% reduction in AIDS-related deaths in India over a nine-year period.
    • The number of pregnant women living with HIV has reduced from 31,000 in 2010 to 20,000 in 2019.
    • Overall, antenatal coverage has expanded, and HIV testing has increased over time and within target range.
    • Treatment coverage has also expanded.

    Progress in preventing mother to child transmission

    • Under the leadership of NACO, a ‘Fast-Tracking of EMTCT (elimination of mother-to-child transmission) strategy-cum-action plan’ was outlined by June 2019.
    • The plan entailed mobilisation and reinforcement of all national, State and partners’ collective efforts to achieve the EMTCT goal.
    • Additionally, in March 2020, we began efforts to minimise challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • From 2010 to 2019, India made important progress in reducing the HIV impact on children through prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
    • This was done through education and communication programmes; increased access to HIV services with innovative delivery mechanisms for HIV testing; counselling and care; and treatment and follow-ups.
    • India made HIV testing for all pregnant women free and HIV treatment is offered the same way nationwide without cost to pregnant mothers living with HIV through the national ‘treat all’ policy.
    • For two years UNICEF has worked with the World Health Organization and NACO to identify high burden districts (in terms of density of pregnant women living with HIV) as the last mile towards disease elimination.
    • Since 2002, when the EMTCT of HIV programmes were launched in India, a series of policy, programmatic and implementation strategies were rolled out so that all pregnant women can access free HIV testing and free treatment regimens for life to prevent HIV transmission from mothers to babies.
    • This has been made possible in government health centres and grass-root level workers through village health and nutrition days and other grass-roots events under the National Health Mission.
    • Indeed, the approach being promoted by UNICEF in focusing attention and resources in high burden districts is supported by the HIV strategic information division of NACO and UNAIDS to better understand the locations and populations most HIV affected, so that technical support and HIV services can be directed towards these areas.

    Conclusion

    Using data-driven and decision-making approaches it is certain that AIDS will no longer be a public health threat for children in India by the end of 2030, if not before.

  • [pib] STARS Project

    The Union Cabinet has approved the sum of Rs. 5718 crore for the World Bank aided project STARS.

    Try this MCQ:

    Q. The STARS Project recently seen in news is an initiative of:

    World Bank/ Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation / UNECOSOC/ UNICEF

    STARS Project

    • ‘STARS’ is an acronym for Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS).
    • The STARS project will be implemented through the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the flagship central scheme.
    • The six states include- Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan.
    • It will help improve learning assessment systems, strengthen classroom instruction and remediation, facilitate school-to-work transition, and strengthen governance and decentralized management,
    • Some 250 million students (between the age of 6 and 17) in 1.5 million schools and over 10 million teachers will benefit from the STARS program.
    • STARS will support India’s renewed focus on addressing the ‘learning outcome’ challenge and help students better prepare for the jobs of the future – through a series of reform initiatives.

    Major components of the STARS

    1)      At the national level, the project envisages the following interventions which will benefit all states and UTs:

    • To strengthen MOE’s national data systems to capture robust and authentic data on retention, transition and completion rates of students.
    • To support MOE in improving states PGI scores by incentivizing states governance reform agenda through SIG (State Incentive Grants).
    • To support the strengthening of learning assessment systems.
    • To support MOE’s efforts to establish a National Assessment Center (PARAKH).

    2)       At the State level, the project envisages: 

    • Strengthening Early Childhood Education and Foundational Learning
    • Improving Learning Assessment Systems
    • Strengthening classroom instruction and remediation through teacher development and school leadership
    • Governance and Decentralized Management for Improved Service Delivery.
    • Strengthening Vocational education in schools through mainstreaming, career guidance and counselling, internships and coverage of out of school children

  • [pib] Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna

    Union Health Ministry has launched the second phase of “Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna” for underprivileged Thalassemic patients.

    Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojna

    • This scheme was launched in 2017 under the Coal India CSR funded Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) program.
    • It aims to provide a one-time cure opportunity for Haemoglobinopathies like Thalassaemia and Sickle Cell Disease for patients who have a matched family donor.
    • The initiative was targeted to provide financial assistance to a total of 200 patients by providing a package cost not exceeding Rs. 10 lakhs per HSCT.

    What is Thalassemia?

    • Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder characterized by less oxygen-carrying protein (haemoglobin) and fewer red blood cells in the body than normal.
    • When there isn’t enough haemoglobin, the body’s red blood cells don’t function properly and they last shorter periods of time, so there are fewer healthy red blood cells travelling in the bloodstream.
    • Symptoms include fatigue, weakness, paleness and slow growth.
    • Mild forms may not need treatment. Severe forms may require blood transfusions or a donor stem-cell transplant.

  • E-VIN network to handle COVID-19 vaccine supply

    The eVIN network, which can track the latest vaccine stock position; the temperature at storage facility; geo-tag health centres; and maintain facility-level dashboard, is being repurposed for the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine.

    Try this question from CSP 2016:

    Q.‘Mission Indradhanush’ launched by the Government of India pertains to:

    (a) Immunization of children and pregnant women

    (b) Construction of smart cities across the country

    (c) India’s own search for the Earth-like planets in outer space

    (d) New Educational Policy

    What is eVIN network?

    • The eVIN is an innovative technological solution aimed at strengthening immunization supply chain systems across the country.
    • This is being implemented under the National Health Mission (NHM) by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
    • It aims to provide real-time information on vaccine stocks and flows, and storage temperatures across all cold chain points in the country.
    • This system has been used during the COVID pandemic for ensuring the continuation of the essential immunization services and protecting our children and pregnant mothers against vaccine-preventable diseases.

    Components of eVIN

    • eVIN combines state-of-the-art technology, a strong IT infrastructure and trained human resource to enable real-time monitoring of stock and storage temperature of the vaccines kept in multiple locations across the country.
    • At present, 23,507 cold chain points across 585 districts of 22 States and 2 UTs routinely use the eVIN technology for efficient vaccine logistics management.

    Benefits of eVIN

    • It has helped create a big data architecture that generates actionable analytics encouraging data-driven decision-making and consumption-based planning.
    • It helps in maintaining optimum stocks of vaccines leading to cost savings. Vaccine availability at all times has increased to 99% in most health centres in India.
    • While instances of stock-outs have reduced by 80%, the time taken to replenish stocks has also decreased by more than half, on an average.
    • This has ensured that every child who reaches the immunization session site is immunized, and not turned back due to unavailability of vaccines.

  • Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)

    The article highlights the importance of CAG in times of disasters to ensure check and balances.

    Context

    • With the nation spending substantial resources to manage the pandemic, the role of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has come into prominence.

    Opportunity for corruption in pandemic

    • Allegations of siphoning off of funds to purchase the inferior quality at prices higher than those prevailing in the market are made.
    • The opportunity to indulge in corruption exists in disaster management.
    •  Emergency procurement to save lives and reduce sufferings are a chance to obfuscate rules and procedures and can happen in all three tiers of governance.

    Role of the CAG

    • If all the major purchases by governments are audited by the CAG, there can be substantial improvement in disaster management.
    • It will usher in better transparency, integrity, honesty, effective service delivery and compliance with rules and procedures and governance.
    • The CAG has issued an order creating a new vertical — health, welfare and rural development, restructuring the office of the Director General of Audit, Central Expenditure.
    • It is necessary that the CAG undertakes performance audits of COVID-19 related procurements, the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) and Employee State Insurance (ESI) hospitals.
    •  A beneficiary survey will become part of the audit process to bring out efficacy of service delivery and the availability and quality of drugs.
    • Audit recommendations can contribute improvements in various aspects of disaster preparedness, management and mitigation.

    Benefits of audit

    • The statutory responsibility of CAG includes appraising disaster preparedness, ensuring that management, mitigation operations, procedures are complied with, and proper internal controls are in place.
    • Ensuring that there are proper records, documentation, authentic, accurate, reliable and complete information and data.
    • Providing assurance to people’s representatives, tax payers and the public at large that government resources are being used prudentially as per the law and regulations and safeguarded.
    • Providing assurance that risks are assessed, identified and minimised with established disaster management process and procedures.
    • Offering assurance that resources are being used economically efficiently and effectively for achieving the planned objectives and that benefits have gone to the targeted beneficiaries.

    Conclusion

    All public entities management must be accountable and ensure that resources are managed properly and used in compliance with laws and regulations; programmes are achieving their objectives; and services are being provided efficiently, effectively, and economically.

  • [pib] Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness for Innovation (CEPI)

    Translational Health Science And Technology Institute (THSTI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, has now been recognized by Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness for Innovation (CEPI) as one of the Global Network of Laboratories for centralized assessment of COVID 19 Vaccines.

    Note: CEPI is neither a WHO subsidiary nor a UN body .

    Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness for Innovation (CEPI)

    • The CEPI is a foundation that takes donations to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).
    • It is focused on the WHO’s “blueprint priority diseases.
    • These diseases include the Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the SARS coronavirus 2 the Nipah virus, the Lassa fever virus, and the Rift Valley fever virus, as well as the Chikungunya virus and the hypothetical, unknown pathogen “Disease X”.
    • CEPI investment also requires “equitable access” to the vaccines during outbreaks.
    • CEPI was conceived in 2015 and formally launched in 2017 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.