Although the Mid-Day Meal program was designed to meet children’ nutritional needs, it has fallen well short of this goal. Talk about it. Provide corrective actions as well in this situation.(150 words)
In spite of measures taken by the governments to address such issues, like the Right to Education Act and NEP 2020, factors like learning poverty and educational inequity still remain in countries like India. For example, the World Bank warns that basic reading skills fail only about 55% of the chilRead more
In spite of measures taken by the governments to address such issues, like the Right to Education Act and NEP 2020, factors like learning poverty and educational inequity still remain in countries like India. For example, the World Bank warns that basic reading skills fail only about 55% of the children by the age of 10 in Indian society. This is the case of students coming from the rural parts of Bihar where there are no qualified teachers or proper schools to send provisions for. Due to this many children’s aspirations are cut short at the most lowering of the foundational skills.
Inequality is also pervasive not only in caste systems but also in gender and economic status. For instance, in some states such as Rajasthan, policymakers have noted that many girls do not return to school due to cultural issues and unavailability of facilitating infrastructure such as girls’ toilets in schools. But glamor students in urban cities like Delhi sit in Air-conditioned class rooms with the latest technology thus creating the gap.
To avoid this, building up of teacher training programs, strengthening of rural digital outreach using examples such as Kerala’s digital classroom initiative could improve the situation significantly. Sourcing ideas from NGOs and private companies as is the case with Pratham’s ‘Read India’ initiative could help as it is a cancer in itself and needs a broader base.
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Answer: The National Programme of Mid-Day Meals (MDM) in schools is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) of the Ministry of Education, aimed at providing meals to students with a view to enhance enrolment, retention and attendance of children while simultaneously improving nutrition at all levels. ItRead more
Answer: The National Programme of Mid-Day Meals (MDM) in schools is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) of the Ministry of Education, aimed at providing meals to students with a view to enhance enrolment, retention and attendance of children while simultaneously improving nutrition at all levels. It is the world’s largest school feeding programme, as the children covered under the MDM scheme are entitled to meals under the National Food Security Act, 2013. Apart from increasing enrolment, as per the government data, in the year 2018-2019, the MDM scheme served about 9.17 crore children in 11.35 lakh schools across the country before it was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, India has recently slipped to 101st position (out of 116 countries) in the Global Hunger Index, 2021, from its earlier position of 94th (Global Hunger Index, 2020). As per the data released by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, over 33 lakh children in India are malnourished and more than half of them fall in the ‘severely malnourished’ category. These highlight the ineffectiveness of the MDM scheme. Various reasons for the ineffectiveness of the MDM scheme are:
Remedial measures required to make the MDM more effective include the following:
A comprehensive, periodical and systematic orientation is pertinent to sensitize all stakeholders including policy makers, implementers, teachers, central level officials and community members to make this scheme successful.
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