A Study of the Development of the State Open Schools (SOSs) in India

Abstract

Open schooling is indeed a concept that has the potential of revolutionizing society at large and bringing out the best in people since it motivates the learners to strive and achieve. Reaching the unreached - this about sums up the entire process. The Jomtien World Conference on ‘Education for All’ (EFA) in 1990 gave a clarion call to countries to develop strategies for enabling access to basic education. Ten years later, leaders all over the world reiterated the need for this in the form The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). India with a burgeoning population of over 1.2 billion established the National Open School in November 1989 in Delhi. It soon became the largest open schooling system in the world with client groups like women, rural and urban poor, the unemployed and underemployed youth etc. The huge size of the country with many large States made it imperative to set up State Open Schools, mainly because of this reason: It is well nigh impossible to realise the laudable goal of EFA and universalisation of school education through the formal education system alone or through the National Open School in the Country’s capital Delhi. The needs of several regions must also be taken care of.