The Indian constitution has provisions to ensure that the state provides education to all its citizens. The Indian constitution in its original enactment defined education as a state subject. Under Article 42 of the Constitution, an amendment was added in 1976. Education became a concurrent list subject which enables the central government to legislate it in the manner suited to it. Besides India is a signatory to several international covenants i.e. Jomtien declaration, UNCRC, MDG goals, Dakar declaration, and SAARC SDG charter for children which is binding on its commitment to making education a reality for all children.
Nearly eight years after the Constitution was amended to make education a fundamental right, the government of India from 1st April 2010 implemented the law to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years.
The 86th Constitutional Amendment making education a fundamental right was passed by Parliament in 2002. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, a law to enable the implementation of the fundamental right, was passed by Parliament last year. Both the Constitutional amendment and the new law came into force on 1st April 2010.
The new law makes it obligatory on the part of the state governments and local bodies to ensure that every child gets an education in a school in the neighborhood.
The Constitution (Eighty-sixth) Amendment Act has now inserted Article 21A in the Constitution which makes education a Fundamental Right for Children in the age group of 6- 14 years by providing that;
“The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine”.
This act has been enforced since 1st April 2010 to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of six to fourteen years is in place.
The 86th Amendment of the Constitution in December 2002 and its enactment since 1st April 2010 has made free and compulsory education for all children in the 6–14 age groups a justifiable fundamental right.
The Act makes it a right of every child to get an education. The Act makes it obligatory for the appropriate governments to ensure that every child gets free elementary education.
The Act mandates that even private educational institutions have to reserve 25 percent of seats for children from weaker sections.
As per the government's estimate, there will be a requirement of Rs 1.71 lakh crore in the next five years for implementation of the Act.
The Act says no school can deny admission to a student and all schools need to have trained teachers. In case of schools not having trained teachers, they will have to comply with the provision within three years.
As per the new law, the schools need to have certain minimum facilities like adequate teachers, playgrounds, and infrastructure. The government will evolve some mechanisms to help marginalized schools comply with the provisions of the Act.
The government has already prepared model rules which have been circulated to the states for preparing their own rules for implementation of the Act. The Centre has also prepared separate rules for the Union Territories which will be notified by the Law Ministry next week.
However, the reservation for the weaker section will not be implemented this year as the admission season is almost over. It will be implemented from 2011-12.
The state government and local authorities will establish primary schools within walking distance of one km of the neighborhood. In the case of children in Class VI to VIII, the school should be within walking distance of three km of the neighborhood.
Now that the RTE Act has been enacted from 1st of April 2010 there is a mixed response from all those who have been aspirants of this act.
The government has already shown its inability to provide adequate funds of
1.71 lakh Crores as it does not have sufficient resources and is keen to involve the private sector in the name of Public Private Partnership (PPP) which will be diluting the rights-based concept of elementary education.
There are no reliable statistics regarding out-of-school children in India, who have been excluded from mainstream education for decades.
The RTE Act does not include its regulatory mechanism for private un-aided schools.
The government is keen to open "Model Schools" rather than introducing a "Common School system" and hence promoting a multi-layered education system to device rich and poor children.
The quality of education is still an unanswered issue in the RTE Act 2009.
The Act covers children between 6 and 14 and does not cover above 14 till 18 and below 6 years.
- The Indian Child Labour Act (The Child Labor Prevention and Regulation Act-1986) and the article in the constitution (Article 24) on child labor draw a line between hazardous and nonhazardous child labor and nonhazardous child labor is allowed below 14 years. As per the RTE Act and Article 21 A of the Indian constitution Education up to 14 years is a fundamental right and it should be free and compulsory. Necessary amendments need to be made to declare that all forms of Child labor are hazardous and should be banned.
- 10 The RTE Act covers children between 6 and 14 years whereas Art 45 of the constitution envisaged all children below 14 years to be covered within 10 years to come under free and compulsory education. Also, it is in contradiction to the definition of children as per international covenants (CRC 1990)
The issue of India's performance of school education:
Once again the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010’ (UNESCO has been published and India’s rank is still 105 among 128 countries. It continues to figure, along with most African and one or two Asian countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are placed in the group of countries with a low educational development index (EDI). In 2007 India was behind several Latin American, African, and Asian developing countries. These countries, which are economically poorer than India, include Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Bhutan, Maldives and Cambodia. Only a score of countries such as Madagascar, Laos, Malawi, Burundi, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Niger are behind India.
Only 66 percent of the children enrolled in Grade I survive to Grade V in India, that is, as much as 34 percent of the children enrolled in Grade I drop out before reaching Grade V. In all probability they drop out without acquiring any level of progress concerning basic literacy skills, contributing to the numbers of out-of-school children, child labor, and the mass of the illiterate population. The survival rate is above 0.9 in most countries with medium and high EDI. For India 90 to 95 percent net enrolment ratio will have no meaning if there is also a 34 percent dropout rate. Rapid progress in the net enrolment ratio may be possible, but a more important challenge is to ensure that the children enrolled in schools progress through the system to complete the given cycle of schooling and even beyond.
How well-equipped are our primary schools? According to Flash Statistics and Analytical Reports on Elementary Education in India (District Information System for Education, published by the NUEPA in 2009-10), on average there are only three classrooms per primary school in India, and there are only three teachers per school. About 14 percent of the schools have a single classroom each, and single-teacher schools constitute a similar proportion. While the national norm is one teacher for every 40 students in primary schools, 30 percent of the schools have a ratio above this norm. In some States like Bihar, the ratio at the State level is 1:59, where there are 92 students on average per classroom. Only 85 percent of the schools in the country have drinking water facilities; 37 percent do not have toilets; only 44 percent have separate toilet facilities for girls. Only one-fourth have an electricity connection; only 5.7 percent have a computer. Hardly half the schools have any first aid or medical facilities. About 32 percent of the primary schools require major or minor repairs to buildings and so on. Many of these figures are aggregated at national averages. The actual disaggregated picture of regions and social and economic groups of the population could be more disturbing.
The picture is indeed disturbing as much progress has been made in recent years. For example, after the launch in 2002 of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) by the Government of India, which is the flagship program of govt of India for elementary education under the World Bank-funded project of the DPEP (District Primary Education Project) for about a decade, it is often reported that impressive progress has been made in elementary education in India. This progress is in terms of enrolments, buildings constructed, teachers appointed, and amount of grant released/utilized, and so on. However, in terms of actual outcome indicators the progress at the ground level is still far from the desired level.
Budgetary Provision:
The UPA government's promise to reiterate the Kothari Commission recommendation of 1966 remains unfulfilled even after 44 years in 2010. Education spending as a share of GDP (2009-10) at 3.23 % is nowhere near the promised 6 %. And during the entire 11-year plan the spending against budget heads was 76% on SSA, 65% on Mid-day meals, 36% on teachers' training, and just 12 % on RashtriyaMadhyamikShikshaAbhiyan. This is more than a frustrating experience. When the 2010-11 budget was presented there was a great hope that the present budget would make enough budgetary provisions for the implementation of RTE 2009. However, the enhancement in the present budget was just a 14.5% increase over last year's budget. This raises serious doubts about the implementation of the RTE Act.
However, in what seems to be a clear dangerous signal of the government favoring the neoliberal policy framework, the proposal to ease Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) restrictions in the higher education sector is a move towards pushing for greater privatization in education.
The Public-Private Partnership: Privatisation of Education in the Name of PPP
Ministry of Human Resource Development has floated a concept of inviting the private sector in the name of ‘Public Private Partnership’. This move is based on certain assumptions; one Ministry of HRD is encouraged by a World Bank
Research study”. Public Private Secondary Education for Developed Countries – a
comparative study” The study presents inferences on cost and achievement of performance in public and private schools in five developing countries i.e.
Columbia, Dominican Republic, Philippines, Tanzania, and Thailand. The study concludes that;
- Students in private schools outperformed students in public schools on a variety of achievements.
- Unit costs of private schools were lower than those of public schools and
- Private schools had greater authority for decision-making at the school level and better emphasis on enhancing student achievement.
Based on these findings, the government of India is encouraged to take it as a solution to budget crises in India and an effective measure for universalization of elementary education for all. Government is keen to invite public-private partnerships in three areas i.e. (1) Infrastructural development (2) Support services and (3) Educational services.
Enforcement mechanism through NCPCR:
The RTE Act will be implemented through the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and in the states through the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) tomorrow on 1st April this act will be enforced and in as much as 32 states of India, there is no SCPCR for enforcing this act. Even if this will be formed soon this body does not have judicial powers of implementation or redress of grievances.
Also, the NCPCR/SCPCR falls under the Ministry of Women and Child Development whereas the RTE Act 2009 and free and compulsory education is a subject matter of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. We fail to understand how this body will be redressing the grievances of children and teachers without judicial powers.
Also, the body is set for taking care of children either '\" in need of care and protection" or "children with conflict of law". This body does not have the pedagogical expertise to deal with educational matters.