Right to Education: Gateway to educational transformation

The historic law - Right to Education (RTE) Act will be implemented on 1st April 2010 with an address to the nation by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The move will provide a much needed boost to the country's education sector.

MORE THAN six decades after Independence, the Indian government has cleared the Right to Education Act that makes free and compulsory education a fundamental right for all children between the ages of 6 and 14 (up to Class 8) and specially focuses on bringing back 8.1 million children of this age group back to the classrooms.

This historic law - Right to Education (RTE) Act will be implemented on 1st April 2010 with an address to the nation by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The move will provide a much needed boost to the country’s education sector.

Key provisions of the Bill include: 25% reservation in private schools for disadvantaged children from the neighbourhood, at the entry level. The government will reimburse expenditure incurred by schools; no donation or capitation fee on admission; and no interviewing the child or parents as part of the screening process.

The act also prohibits physical punishment, expulsion or detention of a child and deployment of teachers for non-educational purposes other than census or election duty and disaster relief. Running a school without recognition will attract penal action. The reservation will be implemented from 2011-12. It will not be implemented in the classes in one go. It will be implemented over a period of 12 years.

The RTE Act promises to create conducive educational atmosphere for physically handicapped children also. It also seeks to make learning student-oriented rather than teacher- and classroom-oriented.

There are however several question that come to mind concerning this great step forward – Why have children below six years and above 14 years not been given a chance at education under this law.

The government has also not addressed the issue of shortage of teachers, low skill levels of many teachers, and lack of educational infrastructure in existing schools let alone the new ones that will have to be built and equipped.