Missing the First Goals on RTE

The nation is less than a year away from a centenary of the struggle for the legal right to education in the Country.......

In 1911 Gopal Krishna Gokhale moved a private members Bill for Free and Compulsory Education to be introduced in the Country. This was rejected, starting a nearly hundred year long battle. Free India’s Constitution spoke of the intent to universalize elementary education within 10 years. Over six decades later and 98 years after the introduction of the Gokhale Bill, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act was passed by Parliament in 2009. In 2010, the implementation of the Act has still not really started in earnest, mired as it is in the question of adequacy of resources- the same argument that had caused the Gokhale Bill to be defeated.  

It must be said at the outset that its provisions fall far short of the international standards of adequacy and equity. However, despite all its limitations, the Act had certain time bound commitments to be achieved within the first six months of its passage- specific promises made to ensure universalization of elementary education with an enhanced standard of quality. Alas, all these commitments remain unfulfilled. Some of the things that needed to be done within the first six months included recruitment of all teachers in accordance with new enhanced pupil-teacher ratio norms, formation of School  Management Committees in all schools, registration of unrecognized schools, bringing them into the fold of the mainstream system and the setting up of Right to Education Protection Authorities (REPAs) in States where a State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has not been set up. Indeed, the very state rules under which the implementation of the Act was to happen have not been finalized in most states!

This is especially unfortunate considering the quality of the education system in the country. According to the government’s own data, three in five elementary schools (the ones covered under this Act) lack a girls’ toilet, two thirds lack ramps for children with disability, one in ten are still single teacher schools, one in four children study in classrooms with over sixty children in a single room and one in four teachers are professionally untrained. The lackluster implementation of the Act puts the spotlight squarely on the poor quality of schools and calls for a concerted focus to implement the long standing commitments of the State to finally ensure education of atleast a minimum standard. 

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