Distance Education Programme — Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (DEP-SSA)

The Distance Education Programme (DEP) is a major intervention under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, created, by the MHRD, Government of India, on 1st July 2003, to implement the distance education activities under SSA in the country. Indira Gandhi National Open University is the nodal agency responsible for implementing the distance education component throughout the country. This national level project aims at providing need-based and local specific training to teachers and other elementary education functionaries associated with SSA and RTE, by employing the open distance learning mode.

The DEP-SSA focuses on the quality dimension of teacher training which is crucial for achieving quality education in the country. reinforce knowledge, motivation, commitment and professionalism amongst the teachers at the elementary education level. Through DEP-SSA, teacher training is imparted without dislocating the functionaries from their place of work and is paced as per their convenience.

DEP-SSA strives continuously and in a sustained manner to help states to achieve the goals of SSA. It is functioning effectively in the states to achieve the gigantic task of sensitizing the local functionaries such as, master trainers, coordinators of block resource centres and cluster resource centres, faculty of DIETs and SCERT. efforts of capacity building at elementary education level, through multimedia inputs which include print, audio, video, multimedia and teleconferencing, thereby facilitating work place and multiple media based training and content generation. It is a State-driven initiative, thereby plan and organize activities in close coordination with grassroot level functionaries, like Panchayati Raj institutions, school management committees, village and urban slum level, education committees, PTAs and MTAs, for effective management of elementary schools.

Open distance learning system has tremendous potential to reach out to large numbers in a short span of time and the interventions have impacted the SSA activities significantly in the country.

This is evident from the achievements of DEP-SSA in terms of professional development of teachers, classroom transactions, community mobilization, girls’ education, etc. The DEP-SSA operates in a mission mode and has thus far trained millions of teachers, teacher educators, para teachers and other functionaries.

For further information, kindly visit our website : www.depssa.org