25% seats for poor in private schools: Govt

In a major shift from earlier draft RTE laws, the ministry has proposed that the government foot the educational cots of 25 per cent poor students, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 5, 2008, 01:50:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Private schools will have to admit at least 25 per cent students from economically weaker sections and won’t be allowed to fail any student till class VIII, says the new Right to Education (RTE) Bill circulated by the HRD ministry.

Approved by the Planning Commission on Thursday, the bill has the consent of several other ministries, a top HRD ministry official told HT on Friday. It is likely to be introduced in the second half of Parliament’s budget session, slated to begin from April 15, as an enabling legislation to enforce Article 21 A of the Constitution — the fundamental right to education for children in the 6-14 age group.

In a major shift from earlier draft RTE laws, the ministry has proposed that the government foot the educational cots of 25 per cent poor students admitted in private schools on ‘per capita’ basis. State governments will have the freedom to decide on the quantum of educational costs per student.

Unaided schools will have the freedom to decide the students they want to select under the poor quota and they will run special courses to help poor students compete better with the affluent students. The government has, however, kept the powers to decide on the definition of poor students, thereby leaving no scope for private schools to tinker with the quota.

"The area education officer will ensure that all private schools admit these poor students," a senior government functionary said. Failure to enforce the quota would invite disciplinary action against the official, the bill states. The officers will be liable for action if the children are denied admission.

For the unreserved seats and admission in public schools, the government has proposed the Common School System that prescribes admission on first come first admit basis within an area of five kilometres. Even though the Kothari Commission in 1966 had recommended this system, Bihar recently became the first state to implement it.

To ensure that the Constitutional obligation of the government to provide free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6-14 is fulfilled, the draft bill debars the schools or education boards to fail a student till class VIII. "There would be a system of continuous evaluation and assessment with special tutorials for poor learners but no students would be allowed to fail," he said.

The bill also deals with the quality of education, the student-teacher ratio, minimum infrastructure facilities and duties of the state to provide the elementary schools required in a five-kilometre area.

But the biggest stalemate to implement the proposed law -- fund sharing between the states and the Centre -- remains unresolved.

The commission did not agree with the formula of the Centre sharing up to 90 per cent of the financial burden and decided to resolve the issue with the HRD ministry. "States performing badly on education indicators would require more money than better off states," explained a commission official.

However, money is not a constraint to implement the proposed law, as the finance ministry has in principle agreed to bear the cost of over Rs 2 lakh crore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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