Central govt may pay for 25% for poor in private schools

HRD ministry to seek funds from the planning commission, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 14, 2012, 21:46:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The state governments may not have to worry about paying for implementing 25% reservation for children from economically weaker sections anymore. The HRD ministry is willing to foot the bill provided its proposal is accepted.

In a move to strengthen implementation of Right To Education (RTE) Act in the next five years, the HRD ministry has agreed to provide funds to the state governments to ensure that private schools reserve 25% of seats for poor students.

Some state governments had been reluctant to implement the quota citing financial constraints as already their education budget had witnessed an increase because of expansion of school education. Over a million new schools were opened in the last decade under the government’s flagship programme Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

However, some states such as Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal had started reimbursing private schools the expense for providing education free of cost to the poor students. In absence of the commitment to reimburse the quota was not being implemented in all private schools.

As per the watershed RTE law, the state governments have to reimburse to a private school is equal to the expense of educating a child in a government school. It is about Rs 1,200 per month in Delhi.

The HRD ministry has proposed to pay the state governments for implementing inclusive education under RTE while deciding the annual Sarva Siksha Abhiyan plan for each state. The proposal is part of the schemes for the 12th five year plan starting from April 2012.

According to officials, it is one of the new schemes finance minister Pranab Mukherjee may announce in his budget speech in March. And, it would be part of UPA government's enhanced focus on health and education in the 12th plan.

To further strengthen RTE implement and improve quality in the 12th plan, the HRD ministry wants funds to have libraries and laboratories in the upper primary level. This will help in improving learning level and scientific temper among children studying in government schools, a planning commission report on 12th plan says.

This is in addition to steps taken by the state governments to improve quality of teachers in schools. Bihar, which was supposed to have worst quality teachers, had tied up with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Nalanda University to train the teachers. Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have got its teacher training programmes approved from the National Council for Teachers' Education (NCTE).

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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