The District Primary Education Program (DPEP), launched in November 1994, was an ambitious attempt to address the challenges of litweracy in India and to provide a decisive thrust to universalise and transform the quality of primary education. The DPEP was time bound project which took place in several phases. From a 1994 pilot start in 42 districts spread over seven states (covering 11 percent of primary students), the program has been taken to scale with impressive rapidity and now reaches over 55 percent of India’s 110 million primary students. Moreover, it has had “spread effects” on fundamental aspects of primary education quality across
India.
Objectives of DPEP:
The objectives of the programme are: (as per Phase I)
- To provide access to all children to primary education through formal primary schools or its equivalent through alternatives;
- To reduce overall dropouts at the primary level less than 10 percent
- To increase achievement levels by 25 percentage points over and above the measured baseline levels; iv) to reduce disparities of all types to less than 5 percent.
Planning process under DPEP:
- The programme identified district as the unit for initiating decentralized educational planning. Selection of the unit for planning, a district is in line with the under-standing that India had arrived at as per the recommendations of various Committees.
- The programme attempted to alter the pattern of resource decisions from state level to local levels.
- The programme attempted to strengthen the planning process to make it more consultative, participatory and transparent.
- It tried to provide professional resource support to academic activities through new organisational arrangements like the BRCs and CRCs.
- It attempted to provide support to schools through providing contingency grants of Rs.2000/= to each school and Rs.500/= to every teacher annually.
- The planning process tried to create local level capacity both at the district and sub-district levels.
