UPSC Express

The Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which represents the consequential legislation envisaged under Article 21-A, provides a right to full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school which satisfies certain essential norms and standards.

The main objective of RTE is to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the age of 6 to 14 years. To achieve this, the Act provides various provisions, including twenty-five per cent reservation for economically disadvantaged communities in all private schools, teacher training, norms for schools etc.

Success of the Act:

• There is a significant increase in the enrollments rates and at the same time reduction in drop-out rates in primary schools.
• Considerable progress in education inputs over the last decade due to efforts like SSA and RTE – pupil-teacher ratios have fallen over 20 percent (from 47.4 to 39.8).
• Also, there have been significant improvements in the physical infrastructure of schools in India. For example-fractions of schools with toilets and electricity has more than doubled.

Various shortcomings in its implementations:

• One flaw is the “no failure” policy. Children are constantly passed to higher grade levels, regardless of whether or not they are prepared for that higher level of work.
• The country’s school students still depend on inadequate government schools – where teacher quality is abysmal, attendance is poor, infrastructure non-existent, and corruption rampant.
• There are no special audit mechanisms like in the case of NREGA.
• There is shortage of teaching staff in primary schools and the primary issue is of teacher absenteeism.
• Most private schools don’t reserve 25% quota for EWS category even after the government directive.

Way Forward:

The government needs to take various steps like strict enforcement of 25% quota, timely reimbursement to schools, use of advanced technology like biometrics to check teacher absenteeism, more focus on school infrastructure etc. for effective implementation of RTE.