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Abstract
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is a national programme operating in a mission mode to achieve the constitutional goal of UEE and provide useful and quality education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years. Block Resource Centres (BRCs) and Cluster Resource Centres (CRCs) have been established in every state under DPEP/ SSA to provide academic monitoring and providing onsite support to the teachers. BRCs/ CRCs are expected to mobilize the local community to participate in the management of school and extend support to school system. The present paper focuses on role and functions of BRCs and CRCs undertaken in accordance with the prescribed role and functions. It finds out the constraints and problems faced by BRC and CRC coordinators. On the basis of both primary and secondary sources of data, it is recommended that non-academic activities of the BRCCs and CRCCs should be minimal. To bring out qualitative improvement in education under SSA, various interventions have to be made on training of teachers and academic support to teachers/ schools on regular basis.
Keywords: BRCs,CRCs, DPEP, SSA, UEE.
INTRODUCTION
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is a national programme operating in a mission mode to achieve the constitutional goal of UEE and provide useful and quality education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years. Block Resource Centres (BRCs) and Cluster Resource Centres (CRCs) have been established in every State under DPEP/ SSA to provide academic monitoring and onsite support to the teachers. BRCs/ CRCs are expected to mobilize the local community to participate in the management of school and extend support to school system to enroll every child in the age group 6-14 years to ensure enrolled children attend the school regularly; all enrolled students acquire minimum level of learning expected at the end of each grade. Nevertheless, over the years BRCs and CRCs have been functioning in the State of Odisha and have been playing significant role in the improvement of quality of elementary education. Since they perform variety of functions, systematic and planned interventions are required from time to time to bring out desired changes in their functioning to improve the quality of education.
To bring out qualitative improvement in education under SSA, various interventions that have been...