On this April 1st, a whole year passed when the Right To Education Act was implemented with a vision, that from now onwards no child will remain outside of the school. Every child (for the age group 6 to 14) has a legal/constitutional right for getting compulsory, free, elementary education. The NCPCR (National Council For protection of Child Rights), is mandated to monitor and overview the implementation of act across the nation. The state governments have to establish the state unites of NCPCR to provide the inputs regarding the execution and performance of act at grass-root level.thees state units will monitor the execution of act as well. But till date only a few states have notified the act, that are, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Odissa, Sikkim, Andhra Pradesh etc. Obviously it is not a pleasing scenario and clearly indicate the negligence and indifference about the act.
The School Management Committees are a unique feature of this act, because these committees are responsible to monitor the execution of act at every individual school and further assessment of the various Claus followed by school administration to improve the quality of education. These SMCs will be formed with two third members from civil society members. Moreover, the SMCs are the primary level of grievance addressal mechanism. Rajasthan is the only state where SMCs are established in all government run and government aided schools. Maharashtra has also shown good progress on this front, whereas other states are completely lacking at this front.
In short, the idea is good; the process to execute the idea has been started. The implication of RTE could be seen as a step forward towards a more just, equal and civil rights base society who is well concerned about the future of its children. This act has opened a door to the world of possibilities, opportunities and accessibility to each section of society.
However, is it the only picture of the one year performance of RTE act, answer is no..it is not the whole picture. There are many other fronts where the act is badly lacking or better I should say that execution of the act is not proper. The biggest question is how to take these efforts or initiatives further? The RTE act has made a timeframe of three years for fully implementation of its provisions. Those schools, that will be failed to implement all the rules and regulations given in law, would loose their authority and recognition after three years. Therefore, it becomes necessary to review the performance of last one year.
State governments are not taking interests to implement the act, (what so ever reason they have). Therefore, it has become a tough task for NCPCR to get the data and inputs regarding the execution of act. The NCPCR itself is facing a number of problems; one of them is lack of adequate trained staff and network of ground workers.
Apart from that, there are some other issues between state and centre. One of them is the definition of elementary education. In many states, the elementary education means class 1st to class 6th, where as in RTE act it has been defined from class 1st to class 8th. Another issue is about the child labour, the act made it compulsory to bring all children up to 14years in to the school. But there is no provision to bring those lost kids into school, who are working in industries, hotels or at homes.
The RTE act emphasis a lot on physical and academic infrastructure; academic infrastructure means the trained teachers and adequate study material. Physical infrastructure includes a pukka school building, separate toilets facilities for girls and boys and drinking water facility in school premise. Because many surveys has revealed that absence of separate toilets is one of the major reason for the drop out of girl students. The act also make provisions for playground, library, fully-furnished class-rooms and equipped kitchens for mid-day meal schemes. The act clearly talks about to create a child-friendly atmosphere for quality education.
We all know that many government run and government aided schools, even private schools do not have above mentioned facilities. Libraries and playgrounds are kind of luxuries for them. If talking about academic infrastructure, than there is a huge gap of at least half million trained teachers. In Rajasthan, where in last few years many primary (most of them are Rajiv Gandhi Swarnjaynti Pathshalas) and upper primary schools were promoted to the higher level, do not have a single teacher or adequate teachers from last 3-4 years. As per the provisions of act we need 14 lakhs trained teachers but hitherto we have only half million of them. There are at least 8 states that are facing the problem of less trained teachers and U.P. is the leading state among those. If we are going to close the unauthorized and unrecognized schools after three years due to their failure in following the norms of RTE act than what back up plan we have for those thousands of students who are studying in those schools?
The government says that those students will get admission in there nearby schools, because as per the act no school can deny the admission of a child, especially if he/she is residing in the one KM area of the school. But how many schools are following this norm, in fact they can not fulfill this Claus, because they do not have adequate teaching staff and physical infrastructure to handle so many students. If we take example of capital city Delhi, than even in present session, hundreds of students were denied from admission due to above reasons. Some 3000 children got admission in city school after the intervention of state commissioner of NCPCR state unit. Therefore, when the capital city is facing such kind of troubles than what we can hope from other states. At present, eight million students are out of school, due to various reasons and they belong to different strata of society.
Here it would be appropriate to discuss the 25% claus, act says that all schools including private once who do not get any funds from government are also bound to reserve 25%seats for weaker section children. But government has not issued any kind of guidelines or notification regarding implementation of this claus. Therefore, many schools have escaped this norm very easily. In Rajasthan, in the present session, the private schools have not reserved 25%seats for weaker section. The biggest excuse they are giving that they have not received any such notification from government, so now its not possible to give admission those EWS kids.
While talking about the 25% claus, let’s discuss its other aspects as well. The government has declared that it will bear the expenses of school fee and books-stationary. Fine, it is a very good, the poor children and their families will certainly feel relaxed and happy for such a generosity of government. But are these the only expenses in a private school? No, not at all, there are a number of other expenses, fees and charges that a normal student has to pay. From educational tour to lab charges, picnics, cultural functions and tours and so on. When the children of weaker section would not be able to pay those extra charges than obviously the teachers and school administration would become biased towards them. Won’t it lead to a new sort of discrimination?
Some states like Uttar Pradesh are complaining for fund shortage, as the implication of act is a collective responsibility of both center and state. But, this is half truth, there is no single state that has fully utilized the fund allotted for SSA. Obviously, that fund and budgetary allocations are hardly an issue.
The major issue is awareness generation, the national coordinator of RTE, Kiran Bhattey, herself accepted that awareness regarding the act at ground level is very less. Principals, school administration and teachers are not well aware of all provisions and features of RTE act. This is such a poor condition and improvement is not a lone responsibility of government or NCPCR, here the role of civil society organizations and whole social community become very important.
Now we come to an issue which has not gained much attention yet but in future it will emerge one of the key concerns regarding RTE act. The Right to Education is now a fundamental right, therefore, if the right is denied, violated or the school failed to provide quality education or if the child faced physical or mental harassment in the school, than the child or his/her parents can go to court to get the adequate compensation. The act also banned screening test, corporal punishments, donation etc. In last one year Delhi unit (NCPCR) alone received 11,000 plus complaints regarding the violation of act due to various grounds that include admission denial of EWS (economically weaker section) children The NCPCR received 230 complaints in last one year regarding education system and other complaints of parents towards school. A civil organization of Delhi advocates has made a report of more than 200 pending litigation against schools.
Need not to say that if the schools failed to implement the regulations of act properly, than we will sure see a sharp rise in public litigations filed by parents or other social organizations on various ground such as absence of quality education, untrained teachers, insufficient infrastructure of school etc.
So what the call of hour is to make the grievance address system more effective and efficient. In the present form of act, there is no one single responsible person to whom people can approach for the complaints. We need to make sure that the SMCs should not become formal organs without community participation and adequate powers. A grievance addressal mechanism at Tahsil and Taluka level is also necessary, to resolve the problems at grass root level, because a legal suit or litigation, court hearings etc will only put economic and mental burden on parents and finally will effect the education of child. Court should be the last step when all other mechanism have been tested and failed to provide Solution.
Conclusively we can say that a stone of foundation has been laid; now it is a collective responsibility of the whole society to make a strong and beautiful structure upon it.
