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Accessibility to Rural Primary Schools:A Case Study of the District North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India
Objectives: Access to primary education determines the extent of mobility. Here, we assess the accessibility of children to rural primary schools through the three parameters such as travel time, travel cost and quality of schools.
Methods/Statistical analysis:The new approach to local-level planning is known as Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning (IRAP). The feature of local level planning is the development of a quantification technique by which accessibility to primary schools would be determined. It would be expressed in form of indices.Here household is taken as the unit of analysis. The three parameters taken are travel time, travel cost and quality of service, represented by Accessibility Index.
Findings: Results show that with the help of an Accessibility Index, a village with a higher score has more difficulties in accessing primary schools and a village with a lower score has fewer difficulties. These are determined by the importance put on accessibility to primary schools based on travel time, travel cost and quality highlighting no of students, teachers, classroom and number of classes. Weights are assigned accordingly. The village Berunanpukuria would be more concerned over the problems caused due to more travel time factor, lack of quality factor depending on the importance put on them. On the other hand, the village Fateabad Narayanpur would be less concerned with the problems because they have assigned lower importance to the factors of accessibility as quality factors have catered the need for accessibility.We need to identify the alternative projects and then select the best solution within the available budget, in consultation with the villagers. Thus, it is necessary to examine the impact of the facility or infrastructure on the nearby villages.
Application/Improvements: Accessibility Index is a useful parameter to decide the provision of infrastructure, services and its impact. The accessibility indices (AI) help to compare the villages with regard to accessibility to primary schools.
Keywords
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