Jagananna Vidya Kanuka (now Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Vidyarthi Mitra Student Kits)

What is Jagananna Vidya Kanuka?

Jagananna Vidya Kanuka is the Andhra Pradesh school kit scheme run by the Department of School Education. Under it, every child enrolled in a government or government-aided school in the state, from Class 1 to Class 10, receives a free kit of school essentials at the start of the academic year. The scheme was launched in 2019-20 and has been repeated every year since.

Jagananna Vidya Kanuka exists to remove the start-of-year cash shock that pushes poor households into borrowing or into keeping a child out of school. Uniforms, shoes, a bag and notebooks together cost a family upward of two thousand rupees per child, and a family with three school-going children faces that bill in a single month. The state absorbs that cost entirely.

Following the change of government in June 2024, Andhra Pradesh renamed the scheme. The kit is now distributed as the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Vidyarthi Mitra (SRKVM) student kit, named after the philosopher-statesman and former President Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Parents and teachers still commonly say Vidya Kanuka, which in Telugu means "the gift of education", so this page uses both names. Nothing about who gets the kit, what is in it, or how it is distributed changed with the renaming.

According to the Department of School Education, the 2025-26 distribution covered 35.94 lakh students at a total outlay of Rs 953.71 crore; Rs 778.68 crore from the state and Rs 175.03 crore from the central government's share of the textbook and uniform components under Samagra Shiksha. Each kit was valued at about Rs 2,279.

What is inside the school kit?

The 2025-26 kit issued to each student contains:

Uniform cloth is supplied and stitched rather than handed over as a ready garment in some districts, with stitching charges paid through the school. Dictionaries are supplied in the relevant medium of instruction, and the department has printed sets for minority-medium schools including Urdu, Tamil and Odia media.

The Quality Council of India was engaged to run layered quality checks on the cloth, shoes and printing before dispatch, after complaints in earlier years about uniform cloth quality.

Who is eligible for the school kit?

Your child receives the kit if:

• Your child is enrolled in Class 1 to Class 10 in an Andhra Pradesh government school, municipal school, ZP school, model school, tribal welfare or social welfare residential school, or a government-aided school.
• Your child's enrolment is entered in the department's Child Info / UDISE record, which is what generates the school's kit indent.

There is no income limit, no caste condition and no ration card requirement. Every enrolled child in a covered school gets a kit, regardless of family income.

Your child is not eligible if:

• Your child studies in a private unaided school. These schools are outside the scheme entirely.
• Your child is in Intermediate, junior college or above. The kit stops at Class 10.
• Your child is not entered in the school's enrolment record, for instance a child admitted late and never added to Child Info. This is a records problem rather than an eligibility bar, and the headmaster can fix it.

How to get the Jagananna Vidya Kanuka kit

Jagananna Vidya Kanuka has no application form. Distribution is enrolment-driven, and the steps below describe what a parent actually has to do.

1. Admit the child to a government or government-aided school in Andhra Pradesh, or continue an existing enrolment into the next class.
2. Confirm the child's name is in the school's enrolment record. Ask the class teacher whether your child appears in the Child Info list, because the kit indent for the school is generated from that list. A child missing from the record will be missing from the kit count.
3. Collect the kit from the school in the opening week of the academic year, normally in June. Kits are issued by the class teacher or headmaster against a signed acknowledgement.
4. Check the contents against the item list before you leave, and report a missing item, wrong shoe size or wrong-medium textbook to the headmaster the same day. Shortfalls are made up from the mandal stock point.
5. If your child joins mid-year, submit the transfer certificate to the new school and ask the headmaster to raise a supplementary indent so a kit is drawn for the child.

No payment is required at any stage. Parents should not pay any amount to a teacher, agent or shop for the kit or for stitching beyond what the school formally notifies.

How is the kit distributed?

Distribution runs through a fixed supply chain that is worth understanding because it explains why kits sometimes arrive late in a particular village:

1. Schools enter class-wise strength and uniform sizes into the department's system, which produces a district indent.
2. Textbooks are printed and uniform cloth, shoes, socks, belts and bags are procured centrally by the Department of School Education, with quality inspection before dispatch.
3. Stock is moved to mandal-level stock points, generally by the end of May.
4. Schools draw their allotment from the mandal stock point and hand kits to students in the first days of the academic year.

Delays almost always sit at the indent or the mandal stock point stage, not at the school. A headmaster can usually tell a parent exactly which item is pending and when the mandal stock point expects it.

Common problems and how to fix them

• Child's name missing from the list. The child was not entered in Child Info or joined after the indent closed. The headmaster raises a supplementary indent.
• Wrong uniform size. Sizes are indented in advance from the previous year's measurements. Report it to the headmaster; schools exchange sizes internally once all classes have collected.
• Wrong medium textbooks. Common in schools that changed medium or in minority-medium schools. Raised through the Mandal Educational Officer.
• Kit not received at all, weeks into the term. Escalate to the Mandal Educational Officer, then the District Educational Officer.
• Being asked to pay. The kit is free. Any demand for money should be reported to the headmaster and the Mandal Educational Officer.

Key dates

Andhra Pradesh's academic year usually opens in the first half of June, and kits are targeted for distribution on the opening day or within the first week. Mandal stock points are typically loaded by the end of May. There is no application window and no last date, because distribution follows enrolment rather than an application.

Help and grievance redressal

• Headmaster of the school, the first and usually the fastest route for a missing kit, wrong size or wrong-medium book
• Mandal Educational Officer (MEO) — for shortfalls the school cannot solve
• District Educational Officer (DEO), for district-level supply failures
• Commissionerate of School Education, Andhra Pradesh at cse.ap.gov.in, for policy and scheme information

Jagananna Vidya Kanuka, now the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Vidyarthi Mitra kit, is free and automatic. No parent needs an agent, a form or a fee to receive it.