Parliament Question: PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF SCHOOL EDUCATION & LITERACY LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO- 1214 ANSWERED ON – 28/07/2025 PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 †1214. Shri Jaswantsinh Sumanbhai Bhabhor:

Will the Minister of EDUCATION be pleased to state:

(a) whether the schools and students of Dahod district participated in PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 along with the improvement taken place in their quality;

(b) the number of higher education institutions in Dahod district benefited under the PM-Usha scheme; and

(c) whether the Government has taken any steps to strengthen the education system in Dahod district? ANSWER MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (SHRI JAYANT CHAUDHARY)

(a) The PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 (formerly National Achievement Survey) was undertaken in December, 2024 by the National Assessment Centre, PARAKH, NCERT under the aegis of the Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education to understand the baseline performance under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in development of competencies among the students at the end of the Foundational, Preparatory, and Middle stages (Grades 3, 6, and 9 respectively).

The Sarvekshan is designed as a system-level reflection on Learning Outcomes in India which underscores critical competency, skill or infrastructural gaps at various stages of schooling. It equips policy makers with robust, district-level data on learning outcomes and contextual variables captured through student, teacher and school questionnaires to design evidence driven interventions for enhancing the quality and effectiveness of school education Nationwide over 21.15 lakh students and 2.70 lakh teachers and school leaders from more than 74,000 schools across 781 districts from all States/UTs participated in the survey. From Dahod district, a total of 3,530 students and 417 teachers and school leaders from 120 unique schoolsparticipated in the survey. National, State and District level report cards for PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024 are accessible at https://dashboard.parakh.ncert.gov.in/en.

The major highlights of Dahod’s performance in the PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan are given

below: • At the Foundational Stage, Dahod has performed above the State (Gujarat’s) average in both Language (60%) and Mathematics (54%), which is a positive reflection of the efforts made under the foundational learning initiatives such as NIPUN Bharat Mission.

• At the Preparatory Stage, Dahod's performance remains comparable to the State average. While Language scores are marginally lower (49%), the district has maintained parity in The World Around Us (45%) and slightly exceeded the State in Mathematics (41%), indicating steady academic progression at the preparatory stage.

• At the Middle Stage, the district lags behind State’s average performance. For instance, Dahod’s scores in Language (40%), Mathematics (28%), Science (31%) and Social Science (31%) are lower than the State’s average score.

(b) Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme aimed at funding specific State Government Universities and Colleges, so as to improve their quality by ensuring their conformity to prescribed norms and standards.

The Government has launched the third phase of RUSA in June 2023 in the form of Pradhan Mantri Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (PM-USHA), with an outlay of Rs. 12,926.10 crore, including the committed liabilities of the earlier phase of RUSA, for the period 2023-24 to 2025-26, to cater to the needs of educationally unserved/ underserved areas. Under PM-USHA, priority is given to focus districts. The focus districts are identified by the concerned States/ UTs based on various criteria, including low Gross Enrolment Ratio, Gender Parity, population proportion and enrolment proportion for females, transgenders, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes, Aspirational/ Border Area/ Left Wing Extremism prone district, etc.

Under the scheme, 4 units have been approved in Dahod district of Gujarat for a total Central Share of Rs.12.74 crore under various components, as per the details given below:

Sl. No. Phase Component Units approved Total central share approved (Rs. in crore) 1 RUSA Erstwhile MDC Government Science 1.34 College, Zalod, Dahod 2 RUSA Upgradation of Existing Navjivan Science 2.40 Degree College to Model College, Dahod Degree College3 PM- Grants to Strengthen Navjivan Science 3.00 USHA Colleges College, Dahod 4 PM- Gender Inclusion and Dahod (district as a 6.00 USHA Equity Initiatives unit)

(c) The Department of School Education and Literacy is implementing an integrated Centrally Sponsored Scheme for School education - Samagra Shiksha since 2018-19. The scheme treats school education holistically, in a continuum from Balvatika to Class XII and provides support for the implementation of the RTE Act. The Scheme has been aligned with the recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and aims to ensure that all children have access to quality education with an equitable and inclusive classroom environment which should take care of their diverse background, multilingual needs, different academic abilities and make them active participants in the learning process.

As per norms of the Samagra Shiksha, the annual plans are prepared by the States and UTs as per their requirements/ priority and the same are then appraised and approved by the Project Approval Board (PAB) in the Department of School Education & Literacy in consultation with the States and UTs as per the programmatic and financial norms of the scheme and physical and financial progress of the State for the interventions approved earlier. During 2025-26, a total outlay of Rs. 2747.95 crore has been approved under Samagra Shiksha for strengthening the education system in all districts of Gujarat, including Dahod.

Moreover, funds under Samagra Shiksha are provided to support a comprehensive initiative called PM eVidya, which is implemented by NCERT and unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education across the country.

The components of these initiatives are available to all the students across all the States/UTs, including Gujarat, free of cost. States/UTs collaborate with NCERT to utilise, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives as per their requirements. NCERT also provides regular guidance/ feedback to States/UTs on quality of these initiatives. One of the key components of PM eVidya which enhances digital literacy includes broadcasting of 200 DTH TV Channels and 400 Radio channels to enable all States/UTs including Gujarat to provide supplementary education in various Indian languages including for classes 1-12. The channels have been allocated to the States/UTs and Autonomous Bodies under an MoU with NCERT and are operational.

Besides the above, Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN) Scheme is one of the foremost rights based Centrally Sponsored Scheme implemented by the Department of School Education and Literacy in partnership with the States and UTs for providing hot cooked and nutritious meal to all children studying in Balvatika and classes I to VIII of Government and Government-aided schools. The Scheme covers about 11 crore children in more than 10.35 lakh schools in all the States/UTs. A total of 3.39 lakh students are covered in Dahod district under this scheme.Additionally, the State Government of Gujarat has taken various steps to enhance the educational outcomes in Dahod district, which, inter alia, include monitoring of attendance of teachers and students through Vidya Samiksha Kendra (VSK) to ensure regular attendance of students, recruitment of teachers under the “Gyan Sahayak Yojna” to address the shortage of teachers, trainings for in-service, newly appointed and head teachers organized by Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training (GCERT), preparation of a competency-based question bank—also including Higher Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) questions—and its placement on the GCERT website to ensure wider access for teachers, training sessions conducted by experts through Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo- Informatics (BISAG) broadcast, and provision of both physical and digital facilities under the School of Excellence (SoE) initiative .

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