Right to Education Fundamentally Wrong to Nation?

Right to Education Fundamentally Wrong to Nation?

Written by

Soroor Ahmed

Published on

August 11, 2022

The Right to Education Act may prove wrong to the nation if several fundamental flaws are not rectified, opines SOROOR AHMED

The Right to Education Act may prove wrong to the nation if several fundamental flaws are not rectified. One thing is sure, it will certainly increase the drop-out rate in the country, where about 92 per cent children already give up education by the time they reach the high school.

If all efforts will be made to provide education for more and more children between the age group of 6 and 14, and not above, you are only compounding the problem rather than solving it. This is simply because at the age of 14 you are providing a child with education till Class VIII. If more children are enrolled in the age group of 6-14, it will naturally amount to rise in dropout rate by the time they reach Class IX. If the government is unable to provide education till at least Class X or XII, that is the minimum requirement for even fourth grade government employee, then you are hardly doing service to the nation. Class VIII pass has hardly any value in our society.

The Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act came into effect on April 1, 2010. It became an Act last September after it was passed in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha following lacklustre debate. The quality of debate only reflects the general lack of sincerity of the elected representatives towards education.

Apart from making education a Fundamental Right of every child between the age group of 6 and 14 it specifies minimum norms in government schools. As per the Act 25 per cent of seats in private schools will have to be reserved for children from the BPL families.

This will cause a huge problem as there are different definitions of poverty in India. Take the case of Bihar, where the Planning Commission figure says that there are 65 lakh families living below the poverty line while the chief minister of the state, Nitish Kumar, says that their figure is about 1.5 crore families.

The new Act will further increase the rush to figure in the BPL list all over the country. There is every possibility of people living above poverty line (APL) getting the BPL card made just for the sake of getting free education in good schools.

The genuine poor are not fool enough to send their children to the school meant for the babalog, simply because the government has asked the schools to take them without charging any fee. The poor are well aware that their children would not be able to mix up with the kids of the affluent class. To believe that fee is the only obstacle in getting admitted in good school amounts to over-simplification of fact. Will the school also bear the bus-fare, which runs into several hundreds of rupees or even more?

Who will ensure that the teachers do not mistreat and humiliate the students of poor families? Such things are happening every day. A young gentleman narrated a very interesting story about his nephew. He said that though his brother-in-law is a government school teacher with average earning, he got his young son admitted in a very good school. Though the parents would somewhat manage to pay the school fees, the quality of tiffin he used to take daily was not very good. So he started stealing the lunch of class-mates. On being caught the child was reprimanded and the school authorities complained the matter to the parents, but to no avail. He stopped doing so only when he reached middle school when his self-respect took shape. By now he was able to understand the difference between the rich and the poor.

If the son of a government school-teacher can face such a situation, what will be the predicament of the real poor children? If in many private schools Muslim students are dubbed as Taliban by teachers, there is every likelihood that the children coming from 25 per cent reserved category may be called Naxalites.

The Act rightly makes provisions for no donation or capitation fees and no interview of the child or parent for admission. But the ground reality is that these things are practised secretly with no documentation to prove it.

There is also a provision for special training of school dropouts to bring them up at par with students of the same age. The idea sounds very good but after so many failed attempts and government schemes one can only keep the fingers crossed.

The Act calls for the improvement in teacher-student ratio and better overall infrastructure of the school. But this should have been done even without enacting a new Act.

It is not that there is no good thing in the Act. But the moot point is why are the lawmakers and rulers not interested in toning up the existing system to reach cent per cent education till high school. Why compelling the poor to study in the school meant for children of ministers, bureaucrats, judges, journalists, big businessmen, etc.? Why not disband the very concept of the private schools and improve the whole education system anew?

After all how many poor persons will send their children to the residential schools in Kalimpong, Dehra Doon, Darjeeling, Kudaikunal, Ooty, Gwalior, Ajmer, etc.?