A right that is still a fight

Kirtan*, five, was recently enrolled in the kindergarten section of a private school in east Delhi. Kirtan’s father, who irons clothes for a living, is aware that under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, his son is eligible for free and compulsory education from the age of six to 14. Asked how they would manage after he turns 14, the father looks puzzled. “The benefits don’t continue till Std 12?” he queries. When told the upper limit is Std 8, he criticises it vehemently. “What the government is doing is wrong! We can barely afford this education. What are we parents expected to do then?”

Tulsi*, 13, is enrolled in Std 8 at a prestigious private school for girls in south Delhi. She wants to become a cardiologist when she grows up since science is her favourite subject, but she is also quick to point out that she is weak in maths. Tulsi is a first-generation learner of Nepali origin. Her mother works as a domestic help, and her father is a cab driver; both of them were unable to complete their primary education. Neither is aware that as per the RTE norms, Tulsi will no longer be exempted from paying tuition and other fees from the next academic year. When they learn of this, they appear unsure if she can continue in the current school without the subsidies. Her mother, too polite to show her distress, only says, “ Dekhna padega. Mushkil hoga (We’ll have to see. It will be difficult).”

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act came into effect in 2010, after a protracted struggle to make primary education a constitutionally mandated universal right. One of the earliest and most prominent advocates for universal primary education was Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who began campaigning for it as early as in 1910. It took a century for Gokhale’s vision to be realised, and even then it is, at best, an incomplete enterprise.

Progressive, but flawed

Established during the second tenure of the United Progressive Alliance government, the RTE Act is among the many progressive rights-based legislations enacted since 2005, including the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the National Food Security Act. Touching upon the many fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, these legislations sought to make governments accountable to the citizen.

The RTE Act envisages a barrier-free access to elementary education by stipulating that children aged eight to 14 will not have to pay school fees or for other expenses such as books, uniforms and so on. It abolishes corporal punishment and prohibits detaining a child in the same class until Std 8. It also mandates the empowerment of parents by giving them 75 per cent representation in the School Management Committee (SMC), which is an elected body with the power to hold the school accountable for compliance with the RTE Act.

An incomplete enterprise: The RTE Act guarantees elementary education to all children in the 6-14 age group

The Act was chiefly meant to increase the number of students enrolling in schools and completing a minimum of eight years of education. According to the 2011 Census, one in every seven children aged six to 14 have never attended a school. The gross enrolment ratio for elementary education has since witnessed significant improvements, and currently stands at 96 per cent. However, enrolment for secondary education dips sharply to 78.5 per cent, showing a high drop-out rate after children leave the framework of the RTE Act. As the Annual Status of Education Report 2017 shows, despite rising enrolment rates, the proportion of youth acquiring even foundational skills has been very low.

Furthermore, under Section 12 (1))(c) of the RTE Act, private unaided schools have to necessarily set aside 25 per cent of their seats for children from economically weaker sections (EWS). Since government primary schools are seen to be lacking in standards, parents are increasingly opting for budget primary schools. Though this clause has been blamed for accelerating the demise of public education and exposing poor children to discrimination among their well-off peers, it must be acknowledged that it has also given parents more schools to choose from. The parents of children such as Kirtan and Tulsi can now demand and get for them the education that only children from well-off sections hitherto had access to.

One of the guiding principles underlying both the RTE Act and the mid-day meal scheme is social integration, says Prof Milind Brahme, who teaches at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and was engaged with monitoring the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and allied schemes in Tamil Nadu for nearly a decade. “With the RTE Act, the principle operates through increasing access to education, and with the mid-day meal scheme, the understanding is that all children will sit together and eat the same meal, regardless of their social backgrounds.” He, however, warns that this goal will fall short unless parents, teachers and the school administration are adequately sensitised to the aims of the RTE aims. “There ought to be an acceptance of the idea that society owes assistance to its disadvantaged members, to put it mildly, and that it is not charity,” Brahme says.

Loss of faith

Kirtan and Tulsi’s narratives bookend the eight years since the RTE Act came into being. In both cases, the parents have had to jump several social, financial, and administrative hoops to enrol their children in private schools. Kirtan’s father had to spend up to ₹8,000 for textbooks and uniforms at the time of enrolment; he is unsure how he can meet more expenses if the school demanded it. Tulsi’s mother depends on her employer to pay the bus fees — about ₹17,000 a year. She is also reliant on them for Tulsi’s after-school classes. The child would often come home with incomplete notes because the teacher had wiped the blackboard clean before she could copy it into her notebook. “Many a time, I have found nine or 10 mistakes on a page that has already been corrected by the teacher. Tulsi receives no attention in the subjects she is weak in, and her mother is too hesitant to ask for it at parent-teacher meetings. I have often wondered what benefit these children get after struggling so hard to get into such an expensive school,” remarks the mother’s employer, who prefers not to be named.

The RTE Act is meant to ensure the parents don’t incur any expenses at all, but both sets of parents have no faith in government schools. “Why would we put our children there? There are no good facilities — the classrooms are overcrowded, the bathrooms stink. The teachers don’t care about the students. They won’t learn English if they study there,” says Tulsi’s mother, shaking her head. This criticism of the poor infrastructure and paucity of trained teachers in government schools is a widely held one.

A political priority

A July 2017 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India assessed the extent to which central and state governments complied with the provisions of the Act and utilised the allocated funds. It pegged the national compliance at eight per cent. Since education comes under the Concurrent List, states play a critical role in customising and implementing the Act in accordance with their respective socio-cultural context. The CAG report found that in six states, not even one per cent of the schools complied fully with the Act. The two main factors hindering the RTE’s implementation are inadequate financial investment in education and lack of well-trained teachers, says Ambarish Rai, national convener of the RTE forum, a collective of national education networks. “The majority of teacher training institutes are run by profit-oriented private organisations that promise no quality or accountability. In addition to receiving little or no training, teachers are given a multitude of time-consuming clerical tasks like election duty, administering vaccines, opening bank accounts. Their salaries don’t come on time, and they receive no counselling or mentorship. How then is the teacher expected to carry out the Comprehensive and Compulsory Evaluation (CCE)?” he asks.

The CCE is meant to evaluate each child’s capacities beyond the conventional literacy and numeracy skills. The No Detention Policy (NDP)until Std 8, in conjunction with the CCE, was brought about because too often children bear the stigma of being a ‘failure’ when, in fact, it is the system that has failed them. While the government intends to modify the NDP, critics rue the loss of a potentially good idea. Shijoy Varughese, an RTE activist at Indus Action Initiatives, says, “I doubt removing the NDP will improve learning outcomes for the child. It will only mean that the child is held back in the class for another year, especially in the absence of adequate capacity-building of teachers, remedial classes, and a supportive school environment.”

Naveen Sangwan, a teacher at a municipal primary school in Mangolpuri, Delhi, minces no words: “For the past three months, we haven’t received money for even chalk. We are given no books, syllabus, or in-service training. Instead, we receive orders from zonal officers to open bank accounts and make Aadhaar cards for the students. Do you know the Best School Award in 2017–18 in the Keshavpuram zone was given to a school that had opened the most number of Aadhaar-linked bank accounts?” Sangwan is the deputy general secretary of the Akhil Delhi Prathmik Shikshak Sangh, a union for government primary school teachers. He asks, “After all the non-teaching duties that are assigned on priority to us, when are we supposed to be teaching?”

Ultimately, the mandate of free and compulsory education is diluted in its own practice. “What we need to do,” reflects Sangwan, “is make primary education a political priority, not an economic one. Right now, education doesn’t seem to matter to those who vote or those who take the votes.”

* Names have been changed to protect privacy

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