Right to Education: The Real Discussion

It is more than a year since the Right to Education Act came into force in India. Public Interest Foundation did a survey to find the status of implementation in various states. The findings show that the RTE act impacted very little on the primary education system in India. However different states have taken different approaches and made beginnings in several areas. Why is it important to study the progress at grass root level? Because all the discussion in the public sphere regarding the RTE act has been on areas which are almost irrelevant to improving the quality of primary education in the vast majority of schools. Over 80% of children get educated in government primary schools. So when we want to look at how the RTE act is improving quality of primary education in India, we have to look at these 80% government primary schools. Instead all the discussion was about administration of private schools- the mandatory 25% admission of children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups, regarding the norms of admission, regarding the promotion of children of from one class to another and so on. This is not the real issue. This is a distraction to the real issue of improving quality of education in the vast majority of government schools. The private schools are governed by market principles. If they don’t provide good quality of education, the parents have a choice of moving to a better school. The private schools have built in incentives to maintain their standards. If they are not good, they don’t survive. They don’t need visits from School Inspectors every year to maintain their quality. The proposed inspections of private schools will only lead to increased corruption and will stifle the entrepreneurship and growth of private schools. But we are digressing. So instead of getting caught in this debate about whether and which RTE norms should apply to private schools we wanted to study what has been happening in the government sector which is where our attention should be. What is the status of implementation then in various states? Here are the findings from a survey conducted by Public Interest Foundation: · None of the states has appointed an advisory council to over see the implementation of the act. Appointment of this council is an important first step under section 34(1) of the RTE act. · Most state governments are yet to embark on the journey of estimating the additional funds necessary for the implementation of the act. State governments receive assistance under Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan (SSA). However requirements of the RTE act go beyond SSA and the state governments have to identify the additional requirements, make estimations of funds required and send proposals to the central government. · The data mapping of schools is a critical exercise to identify the need for creation of new schools. The RTE act stipulates that for classes I – V, there shall be a school within a walking distance of 1 Km and there shall be a school within a walking distance of 3 Kms for classes VI- VIII. While most states have responded that this activity is yet to begin, some states have initiated this exercise, notably the Delhi state. This is an area States can coordinate amongst themselves to outsource this activity to a common partner and get the data base completed in a time bound fashion. However, this responsibility falls to various departments in the state such as Planning and so imagining creation of central database of neighbourhood schools doesn’t appear within the realms of possibility. · Finally, all states except one state replied in the negative regarding the reimbursement of funds to private schools. The state of Delhi has budgeted funds for 20,000 children to be admitted to private schools and that’s encouraging. It is a best practice that other states should emulate. So to summarize these are early days still for the implementation of the act. Different states have taken different approaches and at different states of implementation though all of them are in first leg. There is a lot that they can learn from each other. They can gain by centralizing some activities such as creation of database of neighbourhood schools. Can the national advisory council at the Central level play this role of coordinating between the states? That’s an open question!