Govt to pick tab for poor schoolkids

State governments may not have to worry about spending for implementing the 25 % reservation for children hailing from economically weaker sections (EWS) anymore.

Updated on: Jan 15, 2012, 23:52:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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State governments may not have to worry about spending for implementing the 25 % reservation for children hailing from economically weaker sections (EWS) anymore.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry is willing to foot the bill provided its proposal is accepted.

In a move to strengthen the 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 the total seats for poor students.

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

Some states such as Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal had started reimbursing private schools the expenses in a bid to help them provide free education to poor students. But, since these states didn't get any fund from the Centre, they could not implement the system.

As per the RTE law, the state governments have to reimburse an amount of money equal to what a governement school gets for educating a child. In Delhi, it comes around Rs 1,200 a month per child.

The HRD ministry has proposed to give funds to state governments for implementing inclusive education under the RTE Act, while deciding on the annual Sarva Siksha Abhiyan plan. According to officials, it is one of the new schemes the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, may announce in his budget speech in March.

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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