Abstract:

The District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) was launched in India as a centrally sponsored scheme in the year 1994 to bring out qualitative changes in primary education through universal access, retention, improving learners' achievement and reducing disparities among social groups. The programme began in 42 districts in 7 states and further expanded to cover 275 districts in 18 states. The programme, as experienced during its period of implementation (1994-2003), had its intense presence felt at the grass-root level in the target districts. The programme had resulted in improving access to schooling and also the physical environment of the primary schools. DPEP required 5 large number of teachers and other functionaries to be trained. As any single approach or model would be highly inadequate to carry out this enormous task of training, distance education was considered to be a viable alternative. A specific project on Distance Education Programme exclusively for the DPEP states (DEP-DPEP) was launched during 1997-2003 to help the states supplement and strengthen training through distance mode. A number of distance learning materials and media including print, audio, video, radio and teleconferencing were used to provide orientation and training to the functionaries in states. An attempt has been made in this paper to assess the achievement and impact of the distance education intenrention in DPEP. The whole range of DL inputs provided and activities conducted in the states are categorized in four broad areas - capacity building initiatives, training through distance mode, monitoring and implementation, and strengthening of institutions; and the achievement with respect to these areas has been examined. The findings of some feedback and impact studies conducted in states have also been reported. Taking into consideration the enormous training needs, the distance education component has been further retained in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) project, which has by now been implemented in almost all states in the country