Child Tracking System (CTS)

an unique initiative of SSA, Odisha

Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA)

School & Mass Education Department,

Govt. of Odisha

Introduction :

• SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) envisages Universal Enrolment,

Universal Retention and Universal Achievement in eight years of

elementary education.

• Despite of the best efforts of the Govt. of Orissa, it was not been

achieved by bringing every child to the school.

• “Hard to Reach” Children continued to be out of the school system.

Many of them were not coming to the schools after enrollment and

becoming dropouts.

• Migration of the children with their parents, who were searching for

work at different places was a challenge to the system.

• Also the major reason of out of school was due to engagement of the

children in different works to earn for their family.

• To bring them into this mainstream of Elementary Education, there

was a need to know ‘who are they’.

Challenges:

• The earlier system does not have a comprehensive list (village wise) of

these children.

• The children who would enter the school at 5+ age need to be targeted

much before the next academic session begins.

• There was the problem of duplication of enrolment in various institutions.

• There was a problem in tracking and providing schooling facilities to all the

children between the age group of 6-14 years of all habitations/slums.

• There was the possibility of fake names in the school register by mistake or

intentionally for availing benefits, which was enhancing the enrollment figure

of the state.

• There was a need to provide the benefits of free text books, mid-day meal,

uniform as well as aids and appliances for children with disability to the

exact child.

Past experience :

• To estimate the volume of children- enrolled/ never enrolled/ Out of

School/ dropout with different caste/gender/age, the house-to-house

survey was conducted in the state during 2001-02 as a pre-project

activity before initiation of SSA.

• The data collected from the household survey were used for the

preparation of perspective plans for SSA.

• The data is being updated manually through Village Education

Registers (VER) on a piecemeal basis at the school point by the

teacher concerned.

Introduction of CTS

(Child Tracking System) :

• To have a comprehensive data base of children from 0-14 years, the

“Orissa Child Census-2005” was conducted during 2nd -10th October

2005.

• It covered each & every household of the state.

• A computerized database of all the children of 0-14years, with their

name, age, sex, caste, educational status, the reasons for out of

school and other indicators were built up by the end of November

2005, using the ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) technology,

where the data written on paper was scanned and converted into

data base directly.

Child Tracking System (CTS) was designed in 2005 to achieve the three basic goals of SSA/DPEP. They are:

• Access: By tracking the out of school children with their age and reason of being Out of school & bring them back into the mainstream education.

• Retention: By tracking the In-school children and providing necessary inputs so that they continue to remain in the school.

• Quality of Education: By tracking the achievement level of children and taking corrective measures for it’s enhancement.

Objectives :

Child Tracking System emerged with the following objectives :- • To track every child from 0 – 14 years age group by name / DOB / educational / socio-

economic status.

• To track every In-School child for providing the required inputs for retention.

• To bring every out of school child back to school.

• To prepare advance plan for pre-school children.

Stages of development of

Child Tracking System :

Orissa Child Census – 2005

• Creation of Educational master lists of Block/ULB, GP/Ward, Village & School.

• Data collection from around 78 lakh house holds through door-to-door survey using a 26 point house

hold form through Teachers, AW workers, VEC members, Community members.

• Creation of the database of 10.5 million children (0-14yrs) using Intelligent Character Recognition

(ICR) technology & designing of CTS web based software.

• Design and Implementation of the official website www.opepa.in to make the outputs citizen centric.

• Provision of unique Child Code to each child for tracking them in subsequent years.

Outcomes :-

• Reports on In-school & Out-of School Children w.r.t. Child Population.

• Generation of educational indicators like GER, NER etc.

• Reduction of fake, duplicate & double enrollments.

• Identification of Out of School Children as per their reason of being out of school and present

engagement.

• Identification of CWSN with type of disability

• Need based planning & implementation of SSA activities based on individual child. (Though DISE was in place but it was providing enrollment in numbers only and was not providing the number of Out-of School Children)

Stages of development of

Child Tracking System :

Child Tracking System : validation & Updation – 2006

• Correction of errors, addition of new records and updation of educational status of the children.

• Preparation of comparative reports on different indicators for 2005-06 & 2006-07.

• Collection of % of marks secured in Annual Exam of each In-School children for

• Measurement of Teacher’s accountability by linking achievement of students over a period

of time in a school to the Teacher’s performance.

• Focus the low achieved children to enhance their performance.

• Identify the dropout children, Migrant children etc.

• Calculate student attendance rate.

• Compare the Educational Indicators w.r.t. previous years.

From 2007 to 2010, CTS data was printed through Village Education Registers (VER) and provided to

the schools/VECs for its use and updation for subsequent years.

Revision of CTS as

per RTE Act 2009 :

• CTS has been revised to Child Monitoring System (CMS) during 2011 to

support in preparing block level database on Schools, Teachers and Children.

• Login & Passwords has been provided to the Block users to access the On-

line CMS Software to update/validate the database and generate the reports.

• Linking the outputs from CTS with DISE gives the detail information of the

Educational System in Odisha.

• Geographical Information System (GIS) information has been made web

integrated with DISE & CTS data.

• Through www.opepa.in, it helps the users to use the outputs as well as it will

attract the parents/ guardians to seek their child information and intimate us

for the corrections needed (if any), which will further strengthen the

correctness of the database.

Sustainability of the

Project :- The major challenge is the yearly updating and sustainability of the system.

1. Reduction in financial requirements :-

– During 2005, around 3.5 crores was spent on hardware setup as well as software development for

the system and preparation of a huge data base.

– During 2006, around 1.8 crores was spent on printing the validation list for validation of errors and

updation of the data from villages through a large group of people.

– From 2007, Process of updation is done at village level on annual basis by the school teachers and

VEC members with limited financial requirement for the sustainability of the project.

– From 2011, the revision of CTS is done as per RCFCE-Act, 2009 and it has been owned by the

Block Education Offices to maintain Block level database under RTE Act.

2. Sharing of ownership:-

– Involvement of other Govt. department in data updation plays a vital role in the sustainability of the

project.

3. Mainstreaming with other systems of data collection:-

– CTS is now integrated with the Micro planning and School Mapping activity of SSA.

– It is merged with the DISE data collection process, so that the data can be collected at once from

the school and village level.

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Screen Shots of CMS :-

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Source : CTS

Reduction in no. of Out of school Children of 6-14 yrs. age group

(Figures in lakhs)

Project Outcomes :-

Source : DISE

Reduction in Dropout rate :

Project Outcomes :-

Project Outcomes :-

Project Outcomes :-

Utility of CTS :-

• Removal of the fake, duplicate & double information from the school records. It provided the

actual child enrollment in the schools and helped in closing & merging of the institutions having

less child strength.

• It helped in providing the exact information on Child Population, Enrollment, Out of School

Children, Dropout rate, GER, NER etc. and removed all the fake figures from the previous

system.

• The identification of pre-school children helped in getting the information on the exact no. of

children, who will enter to the elementary system. This provided the support to all the schools

about planning for provision of text books, uniforms etc. to the students at entrant level.

• The disaggregated information of out of school children in different age group helped in opening

of alternative schools, providing bridge course, RBC, NRBC facilities etc. to the exact children

having the need.

• Identifying the Child Labors in the state, making them enrolled in NCLP Schools and keeping the

information of all NCLP Schools with the enrollment position. Also to identify the potential child

labors in different villages/habitations.

• The information on the tribal children with their mother tongue and the schools carrying these

children, helped in introducing the Multi Lingual Education (MLE) in the state.

Utility of CTS :-

• Activities for Girls education became easier due to CTS.

• Identification of Girls for KGBV hostels.

• Identification of CWSN and provision of benefits to them.

• Development of useful educational indicators and use of those in need based plan became easy

for the organization.

• Linking the GIS based School Information system (SIS) and Teacher’s Information System

(TIS) with CTS to access the need in infrastructure development and Teachers requirement w.r.t.

the children in any school.

• Giving access to the general public to get the detail information from this system through web

(Internet) along with the progress in the education status of their children.

Use by other Departments :-

• WCD Department is using these data for the activities related to pre-school children and Mid day meal provision

• ST&SC Department is using the list of tribal children for their course of action.

• Labor department is using the information to identify the child labors in different places.

• Health & family welfare Department is using the information for immunization & health check-up of the children.

• NGOs/ Research organizations are using the information for their activities related to children.

• IT Department is coordinating the activities of these departments with provision of additional Hardware & Software supports.

OPEPA has received the

“Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration for the year 2006-07”

for it’s outstanding initiative -

“Child Tracking System”

Recognitions :

Recognitions :

Winner of the

“Best Govt. website” in 10th National

e-governance conference

Thank You

School & Mass Education Department, Govt. of Odisha

Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA),

Siksha Soudha, Unit-V, Bhubaneswar - 751001

0674 – 2395325, opepaedu@yahoo.co.in

www.opepa.in