RMSA is a significant scheme originated in March 2009 with the vision of creating secondary education of good quality accessible, convenient, and affordable to all young children in the 15-16 years age group.
The goal of the RMSA is to improve the quality of education and promote access at the secondary stage while ensuring equity. The policy envisages improving the enrollment for classes IX-X by giving a secondary school within a genuine distance of every habitation, enhancing quality of education imparted at secondary level through making all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms, removal of gender, socio-economic and disability barriers, universal access to secondary level education by 2017, and universal retention by 2020.
The Centrally Sponsored Schemes viz ICT at schools, Girls’ Hostel, Inclusive Education for Disabled at Secondary Stage and Vocational Education were subsumed from 2013-14 under the RMSA.
The subsuming of this policy under the RMSA would guide to prominent financial savings and administrative rationalization of the provisions under the RMSA. On the one hand, it would supplement the fund availability under RMSA. Secondly, since interventions under these schemes stretch to helped institutes as also cover the segment of higher secondary, their inclusive under RMSA will in effect give for convergence rooted implementation of RMSA with the inclusion of improved schools and higher secondary institutions.
Though the advantages to help schools as of now will be confined to the immediate interventions under the other schemes and the deduction of the core components of the eligible RMSA provisions. At the State level, the convergence would begin to integrated and inclusive (aided schools and higher secondary classes) planning and implementation.
