To create a spirit of a high priority for quality education, and to make those in the field of education feel the value of this activity, the state Government in Gujarat took up the state wide assessment, Gunotsav in 2009, with the complete strength of Government machinery, aiming at evaluating primary education and grading of school teachers. The State Government has seen primary education as a grass-root sector and has initiated revolutionary experiments. The Government of Gujarat has initiated a series of steps to improve the level of learning in its schools across the state and wishes to take these efforts forward, so as to achieve a visible and measurable positive change. In primary education, efforts have succeeded in increasing school enrollments and bringing down school drop-out ratio, two major concerns in the education field. The aim is to ensure that Gujarat should be among the top three states of the country in terms of student learning outcomes over the next five years.
Gunotsav is a unique example of being a state initiative — with the participation of all state departments to strengthen 'quality components of the Dept of Education. Different departments of the state government took up additional responsibilities for this period.
The 'Gunotsav' drive has been conducted for two consecutive years assessing students, teachers and schools for impacting the children in the long run. During the first year, the focus was on drop out ratio and encouraging school children to continue their education. The effort came in for praise from UNICEF, and many other organizations. The second year looked into assessment of all subjects mainly Math, Language, Science and Technology, Social Science and Hindi for Std 3 to Sand assessments was also designed for children of Std 2.
Primary education is the foundation on which the development of every citizen and the nation as a whole built on. In recent past, India's improved education system is often cited as one of the main contributors to the economic development of India. At the same time, the quality of elementary education in India has also been a major concern. Student of primary school at least have basic knowledge of reading, writing and simple mathematics equations which may be helpful in performing their daily activities.
While in Gujarat there has been notable focus and efforts on enrollment, and have brought a fare share of success for the primary education, concern for learning outcomes and quality provided in primary education has been addressed by various enhancement programs for learning improvement. It is for strengthening the quality outcomes, the government of Gujarat launched a programme called Gunotsav, or 'Celebrating Quality'. Therefore Gunotsav is defined as an accountability framework for quality of primary education which includes learning outcomes of children as well as co-scholastic activities, use of resources and community participation