GIS BASED PLANNING MODEL FOR EDUCATIONAL FACILITY IN RURAL AREAS

Abstract

Education has immense impact on the human society. It is considered as one of the important investment for human development. It has the potential to provide acceleration to economic development by transforming the functional and structural capacities of the economy. Adaptation of new technologies, reduction in fertility, mortality, better nutrition, hygiene and health status, empowerment of women, social mobility and political freedom are all visibly linked with the educational attainment of the people. As per a UNESCO study on a worldwide basis, nearly 774 million adults lack basic literacy skills, as measured by conventional methods, out of which more than 35 %are in India (EFA report 2008; Tripathi, 2008) and particularly in rural areas of India. Simply said, India has the largest number of illiterate people in the world. Therefore, the education for rural people is crucial to achieving both the Education for All(EFA) goals and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (United nations, 2008), ensuring Universal Primary Education by 2015, promoting gender equity and ensuring environmental sustainability. As majority of the world's poor, illiterate and undernourished live in rural areas, it is a major challenge to ensure their access to quality education (Sauvageot, 2007). In India, the educational policy and its progress reviewed in the light of national development and priorities set from time to time. The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) recognized that the World Declaration on Education for All (EFA), from a national point of view, is a reaffirmation of the policy orientation given to elementary education in the National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1986. The 86th Constitutional Amendment Act of 2002, has now made provision for free and compulsory education for all children in the age group between six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right under Article 21A of the Constitution. However, despite several educational policies, constitutional amendments, massive expansion ofthe education system and a corresponding quantitative explosion in enrolment during the last half century (Tilak, 1998), a large number of people are still outside the formal school system in India. Several steps have been undertaken during the last few years to universalize elementary education. To achieve such goals, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) has being implemented over the country in collaboration with the State Government (Dept of Education, Govt, of India). As a result ofthese steps, the number of "out ofschool" children inthe age group of6-14 years has n come down to less than 5% of the total population in this age group (Dept of Education, Govt, of India). Further, The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has already set the stage for an exponential growth in the demand for secondary level education. Again elementary education only increase the literacy, it is unable to give employment to the rural people in the current world of globalization. Hence, there is urgent need to concentrate on secondary education along with elementary education and a committee of Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) has been constituted in September 2004 in the chairmanship of Mr. Ghanshyam Tiwari, Minister of Education, Government of Rajasthan with the task to prepare a blueprint for the universalisation of secondary education. Therefore, in the present study, emphasis has been given to planning for new high school/intermediate college locations along with primary and middle school with the help of Geographical Information System (GIS). GIS provides the information to fuel those part of decision making process which are spatial in nature and hence it can play an important role in the field of educational planning as one of the important dimensions in educational planning is spatial planning and it refers to locational planning with coordination of socio-economic activities as the integral parts of the planning process. The present study aims to find out the optimal/near optimal location of the educational facility as per current requirement by doing a series of analysis starting from assessment of socio-economic disparities, assessment of disparities in the educational sphere, assessment of village development, identification of nodal center, assessment of school capacity and existing norms on population for different level of school and finally Vector GIS along with Fuzzy- AHP based raster GIS approach to find new locations for educational facility. Laksar bock of Haridwar district has been selected for this study which is one of the underdeveloped block of the district. Assessment of socio-economic disparity has been done based on various demographic indicators like population growth rate, population density, literacy, sex ratio and participation ratio etc. It has been found that the average decadal population growth rate of the block has been constant from last three decades having value 25 % which is greater than the national average of 21.3 %as per Census 2001. It is observed that Laksar town has the highest literacy rate in the whole block, other wise the literacy in this block is rather poor. Sex ratio of Mohdpur Buzurg Must nyay-panchayat is the lowest in the block having value 839 which is much less than the national average of 903. in Assessment of disparities in the educational development is the first step in educational micro planning. It helps in identifying the gaps in different sectors of educational development like accessibility, availability, quantity and quality of educational facilities identified by National University of Educational Planning and Administration (Formerly NIEPA) which is currently engaged in carrying out research on the dimensions of educational development with a view to identify under-developed areas and evolve suitable planning strategies. In the present study, the data of 7th All India School Education Survey (2002) has been used to assess disparities in educational sphere. For educational micro planning, block/village level agespecific child population is required. As age-specific data at this level is not available with census report, it has been obtained by downscaling the state level data available with projection report (Census of India, 2006) .By analyzing different parameters of educational efficiency, it has been observed that the accessibility is good for all levels of school as per distance norms while availability is good for primary and middle schools only and value ofaccessibility index for high school/intermediate school is less than one which implies that there is not a single HS/IC available for 1000 school age population. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) for different level of school is 98.81 %, 53.70 %and 42.80 %for PS, MS and HS/IC respectively while Gender Parity Index (GPI) is 0.86, 0.72 and 0.43 for PS, MS and HS/IC respectively. From analysis, it is clear that gap exists in educational sphere at different levels of school and there is a need to reduce this gap to accelerate the pace of development in the block. To achieve the target of Universal Elementary Education (UEE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) and to accelerate the pace ofoverall development ofvillages, it is required to provide educational opportunities from two different approaches. First is to provide all the higher order facilities to the already developed villages considering them as nodal centers so that the villages under their influence zone be automatically developed. The second approach is to provide the facilities to those villages, which are backward in every respect besides fulfilling the norms for basic amenities. To find out the most developed and least developed villages ofthe block, a study ofvillage development has been carried out by taking several parameters such as education facilities, medical facilities, physical connectivity, drinking water facilities, communication facilities, banking facilities, population density, literacy etc into consideration. With the help of VDI score of 2001 and 2005-06, eight nodal centers are identified and connectivity of these nodal centers has been assessed. IV There are certain norms for providing different level of educational facilities such as distance norm, population norm, norms on class size and school capacity etc. All these norms have been formulated long back and in the light of goals of UEE and USE, it is required to reassess these norms and redefine it as per current requirement. Hence, in the present study, normative analysis has been carried out for different levels of school based on national and state level norms of school education. It has been found that at the national level, there is no defined population norm available for providing a new HS/IC. State level norm is available but it appears to be high, in the light of goal of Universal Secondary Education by 2020. Hence, in the present study, the new norms has been proposed on population and school capacity for opening new IC (Class VI-XII) and there will be no need to provide separate middle school. By doing assessment of disparity and normative analysis, it is easy to find out the villages where there is a gap and requirement of new facility. Normally, money allocated is deficient and it is difficult to provide facilities in all the needy villages at the same time. Hence, a system is required to be developed such that only a defined number (as per fund allocation) of villages may be selected out of a group of needy villages in a cost effective manner as per priority. AVector GIS based location-allocation (LA) model can help in this regard to select/? number of villages out of n number of needy villages based on defined criteria. However, in vector GIS based LA model, it is difficult to include socio-economic factor such as schedule caste dominated villages, least developed village etc, topographical factor such as slope, physical factor such as landuse/landcover and natural constraints such as distance from river.A raster GIS based model can handle all these factors efficiently. Therefore, in the present study, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based raster model has been used to find out the suitable sites for new educational facility. Further, there may exist uncertainty in ranking criteria while using AHP approach. Hence, in the present study, both AHP and Fuzzy-AHP based raster GIS model has been used to identify the suitable sites and it has been found that Fuzzy-AHP based raster model is giving better result than that of AHP. As there are, certain limitations of vector-based model that it cannot include socio economic and topographical factors etc, the result of this model can be modified by taking inputs from outcome of the raster based model. Therefore, in this study, efforts have been made to integrate output of raster-based model to the vector GIS based LA model and based on the output of this integrated model, the requirement of higher order facility i.e. Intermediate College has been projected for 2006 and 2011 and 2016. As per proposed child population norm, there is no further requirement of new Intermediate College upto year 2026. The methodology, adopted in the present study, can be more useful for educational planning in the deprived areas having majority of SC/ST population or Below Poverty Line (BPL) population in hilly regions. VI