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| 100s of such innocent faces stacked in one classroom |
RTE, Right to Education Act was framed in 2009 and commenced in 2010. This month's first day, i.e., 1st April, 2013 marked three years of the commencement of this act.
Lets look upon some of the striking features of it.
- This act talks about imparting free and compulsory education to all the children, 6 to 14 years of age. This has led to an increasing number of students in one class in a school that has a high degree of deficiency in respect of infrastructure. There are over 100 students in one class in government schools. And you can very well imagine how tough it is for a teacher to manage such class.
- Also FREE education till 14 years of age cannot assure that children will go for higher education as well. And we would not want to make our young generation to study till 8th standard and after that drop out due to various reasons.
- It also says that No child will be retained or expelled till the completion of elementary education. This provision gives a sense of irresponsibility to the students and prevent them from studying as such. Quoting from my experiences, one student said to his teacher " Do whatever you want. I won't study anyhow and I know you cant fail me."
- Navodaya Vidyalaya, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Sarvodaya Vidyalaya etc are some schools which are included in "Specified Category" and specified category schools are excluded from the RTE act, 2009. This has increased the burden on government schools even more.
- Financial responsibility, according to the act, was to be shared between central and state government in the ratio 65:35. Here begins the blame game when central government tosses the dice to the state and vice versa. Ultimately schools have to suffer.
- Teacher-pupil ratio should be 1:30 for classes 1st to 5th and 1:35 for classes 6th to 8th. But this ration actually is more than 1:100 in almost all government schools. Recruitment of teachers too is extremely low. If 20 lakh posts were to be filled then only 12.5 lakh teachers are actually recruited. You can imagine how rest of the system is working without ample number of teachers.
- This act talks about inclusion. Private schools were required to have 25% seats in 1st standard for weaker section (economically weak section) and disadvantaged group ( All kinds of minority like linguistic, caste, tribal etc). Private schools have found their own ways to get out of this "Problem". MGD school, Rajasthan has reserved 36 seats for weaker section and disadvantaged groups and they have kept 36 more seats at double the original fees. Sorted! Is it anyhow making the education Inclusive?
- Teachers are not allowed to engage in private tuition or private teaching activity. Even after 6th pay commission salary of a teacher is not self-suffcient that he can take good care of his entire family. So if he will not take tuition how is he actually going to serve those people who depend on him entirely.
- In case of private schools they impart free education to the learners only in terms of "Tuition fee" but books, uniform etc has to be bought on expense of students themselves which defeats the purpose of INCLUSIVE Education as they cannot afford these expenses.
- There has been a shift from government schools to private schools in these three years. Earlier this shift was 16% and now it is around 27%. This shift is purely due to the devastating quality of education in government schools.
- The act specifies that every school should have a kitchen where the mid-day meal should be cooked. But there is definitely no kitchen in any of the schools. Mid-day meal is cooked somewhere outside and nobody is bothered about quality and nutritional value of the food which is served to students.
There are many more points than this. One of our professors Dr Anil Sadgopal (Founder of Eklavya Foundation and Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme in Madhya Pradesh) made an emphatic remark that "RTE is a Fraud which is a step by the Government to remove government school system and switch to privatization completely"
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