The School Management Committee (SMC) has a very critical role in achieving the goals of RTE. It has remarkable potential to transform the present system of education to more result oriented. In fact, this is a vital component of our primary education system and a big step to democratize the education process in the country and it delegates the onus of school governance to the grass root levels. Really, it is a big opportunity for the parents to nurture the future of their children by themselves and provide them remarkable powers to improve the efficiency of a school and ensure a better quality of education for their children. The RTE Act has made a provision for all government, government aided and special category schools to constitute an SMC under article 21 of the RTE Act. The private unaided schools have also a provision of the SMC.
The School Management Committee is to be constituted in the area limit of the school, within three months from the date of commencement of the new academic year. It is very important to know that, now the School management Committee is not merely a monitoring body, but the RTE Act has entrusted the responsibility to the community to manage the affairs of school.
Composition:
• Seventy five per cent of the strength of the School Management Committee shall be from amongst parents or guardians of children. They shall be selected or elected in a meeting of parents of the school.
• 50 per cent of members of such committee shall be women.
• Parents of children of the weaker and deprived sections so also the parents of children with three different levels (high, medium and low) of achievements shall be represented adequately.
• The remaining twenty-five per cent of the strength of the School Management Committee shall be formed amongst elected members of Local Authorities, members of management, head teachers or senior teachers, teachers, educationists or child development experts.
• Two students of which at least one is girl shall be co-opted as members. Such co-opted members shall have no voting rights.
• The Chairperson of school Management Committee shall be elected from among the parents in case of schools managed by Government or Local Authority. In case of aided schools representative of the management shall be the chairperson.
• The Head Teacher of the school or where the school does not have a Head Teacher, the senior most teacher of the school, shall be ex-officio Member-secretary of the School Management Committee and will carry out all election-related work. He or She shall also be responsible for conducting the monthly meetings of the School Management Committee.
Functions:
• Making School Development Plan (SDP) as per the RTE guidelines/norms
• Management of school
• Supervising and supporting implementation of SDP
• Supervision/monitoring of finance, management, academic progress, distribution of entitlements & other functions
• Ensuring accountability and transparency in the system through the social audit mechanism
• Keeping proper accounts of the fund available and sharing its deployment and utilization with the ‘Aam Sabha’
• Creating and maintaining an educational database
• Coordinating with the local authority, generating funds from other sources for development of schools
• Monitoring academic progress of the children
• Instituting social audit mechanism and processes to bring transparency in the system and ensure universal participation
• Communicate in simple and creative ways to the population in the neighbourhood of the school, the rights of the child as enunciated in the Act; as also the duties of the State Government, local authority, school, parent and guardian;
• monitor that teachers are not burdened with non academic duties other than those specified in section 27;
• ensure the enrollment and continued attendance of all the children from the neighbourhood in the school;
• bring to the notice of the Local Authority any deviation from the rights of the child, in particular mental and physical harassment of children, denial of admission, and timely provision of free entitlements;
• monitor the identification and enrollment of disabled children, and the availability of learning materials and other facilities and ensure their participation in, and completion of elementary education;
• monitor the implementation of the Mid-Day Meal and other Government schemes in the school;
• cause to prepare an annual account of receipts and expenditure of the school;
• take children’s opinion through the report of Bal Panchayats formed in the school.
School Development Plan:
• It will be a three year plan estimating student strength, teacher requirement under the prescribed PTR, additional infrastructural, financial requirements and so on. The requirement is that the combined school development plans of a local authority will identify requirements in a bottom up decentralized manner, for each panchayat, rather than in a top down centralized manner, as is the common practice.