A Study of Effectiveness of Transportation/Escorts Facility on Academic Achievement of the Students

The RTE Act requires barrier free access to schools. Barrier free access could mean, at one level, access without any natural/physical barriers. The State will have to make appropriate provisions to ensure access to schooling to such children either by opening a school in the habitation or providing escort and safe transportation facilities to the school, or by any other means. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) aimed to provide Free and Compulsory Education to all the children of 6 to 14 years age group. But many children stay in quite remote and interior areas where schools are not available and/or can’t be opened too. Hence, in order to bring these children to schools, SSA has started to provide transportation/ escort facility. Approximately 50,000 children have been benefited with this facility. The present study is a need based research project sponsored by SSA to study the Transportation and Escort Facility (T & EF) operated by SSA in Gujarat, in the context of the beneficiary students’ academic achievement, with the help of the 30 Field Investigators, using self prepared research tools and the Survey method of research the required data was collected from teachers and principals.