Morung Express News
Kohima | March 21
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s (CAG) investigation into the Nagaland School Education Department on the implementation of Mid Day Meal Schemes has revealed various inadequacies in the National Program on Nutritional Support to Primary Education, MDM.
The performance audit of the scheme covered 120 schools among the 1034 schools in Nagaland State.
Excess projection of number of students
Records revealed that in the preparation of the Annual Work Plan & Budget (AWP&B), the department projected the children enrolment on the basis of information from District information System of Education (DISE)/Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) provided by SSA, instead of independently compiling from the information maintained at school levels.
The enrolment of children from class I to class VIII (2010-2015) as per the MDM AWP&B was 12,79,792, while the report as per DISE/UDISE–SSA was 9,28 934. Thus, the inflated enrolment figure amounts to 3,50,858 excess projection.
The department stated that the enrolment projections were inclusive of pre-primary and National Child Labour Project. However the CAG informed that the pre-primary children are covered by the Supplementary Nutrition Program implemented by the Social Welfare Department and are not eligible to be covered under the MDM program. The CAG highlighted that “the State Government during 2010-2015 inflated the number of children enrolled by a total of 3,50,358 over the figures of SSA to avail funds under the MDM scheme.”
Inadequacies in enrolment, retention and attendance
Meanwhile, the enrolment figure of children in government schools has decreased from 2,96,061 in 2010-2011 to 2,08,121 in 2014-2015. The department reasoned that decrease in enrolment in government schools was because of increased enrolment in the private schools. The CAG however noted that this indicates that the government schools were unable to attract the students despite a number of welfare measures such as MDM.
Further, the department was found not to have any system of capturing daily attendance of children in primary/upper primary schools covered under the MDM scheme. Neither did the Department have any system of data capturing on retention/dropout rate of students.
The CAG examination of records and physical inspection of selected 120 schools reveals a stark trend of the increasing number of children (Class 1 to 8) who could not be retained on promotion from lower class to higher class. This resulted in 722 children leaving school in 2011-2012 and 2,633 children leaving school in 2015-2016.
The investigation also revealed that in 101 schools, teachers were found engaged directly in cooking or supervising cooking of food which may have impact on quality of teaching.
The Commissioner & Secretary to the Government of Nagaland, Education Department is the head of the MDM program in the State while the Director of School education is the State level Nodal officer responsible for planning, implementation and monitoring of the program. The CAG further states that there were delays in transmission of funds through hierarchical chain to implementing agencies and short releases of state share.
