Picture Courtesy: The Hindu
Almost a year ago, I enthusiastically wrote about the recognition of Right to Education (RTE) as a Fundamental Right in India. Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 was expected to directly benefit close to ten million children who did not attend school. According to Union Home Resource development Minister, Mr. Kapil Sibal, “the enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education.” On April 1, 2011, Mr Kapil Sibal released the one-year report card of RTE. Few had expected that in a year the Act would dramatically raise the number of school going children in the country. The explicit commitment was viewed as a beginning to identify and implement innovative measures to realize the goal of providing primary education to the target population. Like most other official policies the RTE turns out to be more about making the politically correct gestures without adapting to socially flexible techniques for achieving the proposed goals. Implementation of RTE is challenged on many fronts but more critically there appears to be an inveterate aversion to review and adjust policy.
Puja Marwaha, CEO CRY draws attention to crucial gaps in the Act. According to her, even though the Act was proclaimed as revolutionary, it practically left out half of India’s children: those below six and those between the ages of 14 and 18 had been omitted from the purview of the RTE. The neighbourhood approach of the Act was flawed as 17282 eligible habitations in India do not have a primary school within one kilometre of the habitation. However, according to the Human Resource Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, “access to education is no longer the real problem now, it is quality of education…” Overlooking the access issue, the focus is on improving quality. To give an impression of ‘moving ahead’ introduction of teacher deployment software is being discussed – software program which will use data from district information system for education and generate lists on teacher requirements developed by the ministry.
The classic dilemma of Center-State division of responsibilities makes the RTE a non-starter; education figures in the Concurrent List of subjects, allowing the Center and States to make legislation. Though the government of India launched the new law with much fanfare last year, its implementation hinges on the preparation of draft rules and notification by state governments. One year after RTE made a promising start only 10 states – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Orissa, Sikkim, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Mizoram- have notified the rules. Issues of resource and cost burden are cited by the States as hurdles for implementing the to RTE.
Recognition of education as a Fundamental Right implied making the right justifiable and enforceable by law. Puja Marwaha’s assessment of the monitoring system reveals the flaws in the enforcement process: “The National Commission for the Protection of Rights of Children – the NCPCR – is responsible for monitoring and reviewing the implementation of the RTE Act. The NCPCR operates through its State Commissions for the Protection of Child Rights. The RTE Act mandates that the SCPCR (constituted by the Departments of Women and Child Development at the State level) to be responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Act. In States where they are not constituted, the Department of Education can constitute a Right to Education Protection Authority (REPA) to look into the monitoring function of the implementation of the RTE Act. However, only 9 States have SCPCRs and 2 States in absence of SCPCR have constituted REPAs, thus leaving 16 States out of 27 States without an authority to monitor implementation of the RTE Act. There is therefore no recourse for citizens who want to report violations of their rights – leaving the Act largely toothless and not implementable in spirit.”
The Government’s emphasis on quality education may sound appealing but requires huge financial commitments. Panjak Jain and Ravindra Dholakia have assessed the monetary costs of implementing the RTE in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly. According to the authors, “meeting the goal of universal schooling of all of India’s children under an education budget of 6% of GDP is, therefore, not possible if all school education is through government schools and all the teachers are to be paid salary as recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission.” It is neither possible to raise the education budget to the required double digits nor to recruit teachers on salaries lower than those proposed by the Sixth Pay Commission. The proposed alternative is to “pursue the goal of universal school coverage through public-private partnership (PPP) in which low cost private providers of school education, who pay much lower teacher salary, cover a significant part of school education.” Despite the proven success of social entrepreneurship ventures in promoting literacy, the Government of India is not actively partnering with private players for realizing the goals of RTE.
According to Amit Kaushik, COO, Pratham, a leading NGO working with literacy and education issues, “RTE is very input-focussed. It says very little on the outcomes of education–what a child will have achieved from 6-14.” Enrolment in schools does not automatically translate into better education. Statistics from Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) report present a disturbing picture: Only 50.3 percent of standard V students in government schools were able to read Standard II level text. Only 36.1 percent students were able to correctly solve a basic division problem. ICICI Foundation and McKinsey International’s report, The Indian Public School System: Time for a Quality Revolution, suggested four initiatives to improve the quality of education in public schools: conduct standardised assessments at national level; set up school performance management system; strengthen in-classroom support for teachers; provide more training to headmasters. These quality checks have not received adequate attention in the RTE.
