Overview of the Programme

In Sync with the national level vision, the state’s vision for secondary education is to make good quality education available, accessible and affordable to all young person in the age group of 14-18 years in the state. The following are to be achieved to realize this vison.

• Providing a secondary school within a reasonable distance of any habitation, possibly it should be 5 KM form secondary schools;
• Ensure universal access of secondary education by 2017 (GER of 100%) and universal retention by 2020; and
• Providing  access to secondary education with a special references to economically weaker sections of the society, the educationally backward, girls and he disabled children residing in rural areas and other marginalized categories like SC, ST, OBC and Educationally Backward Minorities (EBM)

Goal and Objectives

The State specific goal and objective with respect to secondary education in Sikkim correspond identically to those at the national level. The Goal is universalization of secondary education by 2020. While achieving the goal of universalization, secondary education requires not only a quantitative expansion but also qualitative expansion but also qualitative improvement. The guiding principles must be: Universal access, equality and social justice, relevance and development, and curricular and structural aspect. The Goal must be translated into following objective.

• To ensure that all the secondary schools have physical facilities, staff and supplies at least according to the prescribed standards through the financial support in case support in case of government /local Body and Government aided schools, and appropriate regulatory mechanism in the case of all other schools.
• To improve access to secondary schooling to all young person’s according to norms-through proximate location (i.e. secondary school within 5 KM distance), efficient and safe transport arrangements/ residential facilities depending on local circumstances including open schooling. However in hilly and difficult areas, these norms may be relaxed and residential school may be set up in such areas.
• To ensure that no child is deprived of secondary education of satisfactory quality due to constraints like gender, socio- economic, disability and other barriers.
•  To improve the quality education resulting in enhanced intellectual, social & cultural learning.
• To ensure that all the students pursing secondary education receive a good quality education;
• Achievement of the above objective would also, inter-alia; signify substantial progress in the direction of the Common School System.

Implementation mechanism of the scheme:

MHRD is the nodal central government ministry to coordinate RMSA with the help of RMSA State Implementation Societies (SIS) in each state. However, there are a lot of support arrangements and institutions available for better implementation of RMSA. A National Resource Group (NRG) provides guidance for bringing about reforms in teaching learning processes, curriculum, teaching learning material, ICT education and mechanisms of monitoring and evaluation. The Technical Support Group (TSG) supported by MHRD, is a constituent of the NRG and has a direct reporting relationship with the ministry. TSG provides technical and operational support and expertise to national and state level teams.

Besides this, various sub-committees like Curriculum Reform Subcommittee, Teacher and Teacher Development Subcommittee, ICT Subcommittee and Planning and Management Subcommittee have been constituted under NRG. These subcommittees comprise members from the TSG and meet thrice a year to apprise themselves of the progress made on mutually set goals and commitments. In addition, NCERT and NUEPA support through dedicated RMSA units. RMSA-TCA has also been set-up for capacity building support with the assistance of DFID. In terms of financial inputs, the central share is released to the implementing agencies directly, whereas the applicable state share is also released to the agencies by the respective State Governments.