Kids Can Now Check Out Schools By Report Cards

New Delhi, Sep 11 (UNI) Kids will now finally have something on their school-- its Report Card.

In what the Human Resource Development Ministry calls ''a leap forward'' in the exercise of the right to education, the Report Cards of as many as 1.04 million schools will be riding the internet.

Each Report Cards will come with a 2-page Descriptive Report listing the school's major strengths and weaknesses.

The move is intended to give students, parents and interested community members data for ''constructive conversations which lead to improved education for all children across the country.'' The schools' Report Cards will soon be available at http://www.schoolreportcards.in.

The move is an offshoot of a project undertaken in the mid-1990s by the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration to strengthen India's Educational Management Information System.

An EMIS unit has been set up in all 600+ districts which have been equipped with necessary hardware and software and computer professionals.

The project, which involved participation of the Ministry as well as the United Nations Children's Fund, has produced a District Information System for Education-- DISE-- now operating in 581 districts across the nation. The remaining districts are expected to be covered this year.

School is the basic unit of data collection and district, the unit of dissemination.

The latest DISE data is available for the year 2005-06-- as on September 30, 2005-- and information from more than 1.04 million schools imparting elementary education is collected.

DISE annually covers all recognised schools imparting elementary education and maintains comprehensive profile of more than 4.17 million teachers.

It has eliminated time-lag in availability of educational statistics from 7-8 years once to less than a year now at national level and a few months at district level.

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