Evaluation of Gender and Equity Issues Under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan

Abstract

In the last 50 years, India has made significant progress in the field of education. Yet, there are huge challenges, especially when it comes to bridging gender and equity gaps in education. In 2001, the Government of India (GOI) had launched Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) with the specific purpose of achieving universal elementary education (UEE). One of the main goals of SSA is to bridge gender and social gaps. Even though the SSA programme is primarily financed by the GOI, three external Development Partners (DP) also contribute funds towards SSA, namely: World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the European Union (EU). Being a partnership programme, a six monthly review is carried out by the GOI and DP, which is known as the Joint Review Mission (JRM). This desk review was conceptualised with the purpose of doing a thorough review of monitoring and evaluation processes of SSA JRM reports in order to understand how gender and equity goals have been tracked and addressed by the government and donor partners. More specifically, this study also explores how equity and gender have been understood within the SSA framework; whether the SSA JRM mechanism focuses on input indicators, process indicators and/or output indicators; and what are the various gender-related issues that have been flagged in SSA JRM reports and recommendations made over the years?