HRD tells states: follow uniform school structure

The human resource development ministry is asking all state governments to adopt the school structure followed by the Central Board of Secondary Education and other Boards to allow students to transfer schools across Boards.

The human resource development ministry is asking all state governments to adopt the school structure followed by the Central Board of Secondary Education and other Boards to allow students to transfer schools across Boards.

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The ministry is writing to states asking them to drop the variations in structure across school Boards that make it hard to implement key provisions of the Right to Education Act, top government officials said.

The CBSE and 20 other state education Boards follow a school structure consisting of five years of primary schooling.

However nine states and four Union Territories — Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep and the Mahe region of Puducherry —follow four years of primary schooling. While the CBSE and most Boards follow a three year upper primary structure

“Each state is free to decide the structure of its school education system. But the vast differences in structures across Boards make it hard to implement the RTE Act ...,” a senior government official explained.

The RTE Act, implemented from April 1 this year, makes free and compulsory education a fundamental, legal right of every child between 6 and 14. One of the key components of the Act tackles transfer of students across schools, and specifies measures to facilitate such transfers. Different school education structures, however, make transfers complicated.