A yr on, RTE has a long way to go

A year after the Right To Education (RTE) was introduced it has got mixed bag results. According to studies by studies by different civil society groups, dropout rate in many schools is still high, but there has been a slight improvement in new enrolments.

Updated on: Mar 31, 2011, 24:55:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A year after the Right To Education (RTE) was introduced it has got mixed bag results. According to studies by studies by different civil society groups, dropout rate in many schools is still high, but there has been a slight improvement in new enrolments.

April 1 is the first anniversary of the watershed Right to Compulsory and Free Education, also called RTE law. In this year, the independent groups increased vigil in schools to find how the law has been implemented.

"Just five states have notified their own RTE rules so far," said Ananthapriya Subraman of Save The Children on behalf of NGO groups such as Oxfam, UNICEF and Plan, who accepted that enrollment has increased but quality of education was still an issue.

Even the body mandated under the law to enforce it, the State Children Rights Commissions, have just been constituted in half Indian states and the states are keen to implement the law, the NGOs said.

Another NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s (BBA) survey in nine states of 44,000 students shows that 24 % dropped out from the schools even though 21% of them were newly enrolled in schools.

Even the law provides for free education till class 7 level, the NGO found that many schools still seek admission fees. In Bihar, 97% of the schools claim that they provide free and compulsory education, but 27% still charge fee. And, 46% schools do not provide any one of the free learning material (textbooks, notebooks, bags and uniform) in Bihar.

Another problem in most schools is hygiene.

Drinking water is not available in half of the schools in Jharkhand, one-fifth in Bihar, one-tenth in Rajasthan and UP. "Assuming a proportionate distribution of children within schools, one can draw a rough comparison that the situation has improved in these two states," said Rakesh Senger, secretary with BBA.

Another NGO, National Coalition for Education, looked into the role of government bodies in RTE implementation. In all, only 355 complaints were received from parents against violation of the law by schools. The maximum complaints, 211, were received by Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights, which had created awareness about the law.

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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