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Right to education are we on the right track?
Abstract
Despite a few glaring shortcomings, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 proved to be a landmark. It provided a justiciable legal framework that entitled all children (6-14 years) to education and established basic parameters for quality education. Several provisions are, however, still not in place, which brings the efficacy of its features and implementation into question. This article considers the progress and shortcomings of the implementation of the act.
... The effective delivery and monitoring mechanisms for this act is the need of the hour. In order for education to be considered an entitlement, it is imperative for the state to take complete responsibility and strengthen the public education system (Nawani, 2017) [14] . ...
... The effective delivery and monitoring mechanisms for this act is the need of the hour. In order for education to be considered an entitlement, it is imperative for the state to take complete responsibility and strengthen the public education system (Nawani, 2017) [14] . ...
... In order to be at par with other children of the class, the child has a right to receive special training or additional instructions. There is an important concern over implementation of RTE Act, Central Square Foundation -Accountability Initiative, Pp:1. 4 Nawani, Disha (2017 Hence, there was a need to propose and conduct such programme with a justification that the NEP, 2020 had already prescribed the significance and role of SMCs and coined a new concept of the SCMC for regulating the functions thereof in various levels and capacities. ...
Attainment of quality education is a challenge, and SMCs have a major role to play in providing timely inputs to improve the working of the school education system at the ground-root levels. However, the functioning of the SMCs has various challenges and holds us back from achieving this vision and requires proper monitoring framework and implementation - research to highlight the potential existing gaps in the school education system. The objectives of the study were designed to keep Sustainable Development Goal-4 central to its core, which focuses on quality education. This goal clearly ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes life-long learning opportunities for all. The Goal reminds us of the moral imperative to ensure every child has a right to an appropriate education of high quality.
The focus of this study has been elementary school education in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) dominated areas. There is an important concern over the implementation of the RTE Act, 2009 in the school system with reference to the special training or instructions, its modalities, and execution. The SMCs are primarily composed of parents, teachers, head teachers, and local authorities. Active parental participation has the potential to improve the efficiency of a school as parents have the highest incentive to demand a better quality of education for their children. The RTE Act, 2009 stipulates that SMCs should:
1. Monitor the working of the school (midday meal provision, toilet facilities, teacher attendance, etc.)
2. Monitor the utilization of grants received from the appropriate government, local authority, or any other source
3. Prepare and recommend the annual and three-year School Development Plan (SDP), which addresses infrastructure and academic achievement etc. These plans should collectively feed into creating an Annual Work Plan (AWP) for every district, and subsequently, every State.
4. As per the new proposed national education policy ensuring participation and learning through monitoring students’ attendance in school, and tracking out-of-school children, involvement in setting up school culture, which encourages excellence, curiosity, empathy, and equity, sensitization of SMCs on caring and inclusive school culture on a continuing basis and
endorsement by the SMCs on periodic (annual or higher frequency) performance appraisal of teachers vis-a-vis an efficient resourcing and effective governance through the ‘School Complexes Management Committee (SCMC), and involvement in nurturing the culture of planning, both short-term and long-term ones, for the school including human resources, learning resources, physical resources and infrastructure, improvement initiatives, financial resources, and educational outcomes.
This program had a strong component of community mobilization. A large number of volunteers was prepared and the State Resource Centre developed literacy material and training courses for these volunteer instructors. Minimum Levels of Learning (1989) were an attempt to ensure parity and the same standards in all the schools of the country. Accordingly, the textbooks were revised and appropriate pedagogy was propagated for teaching with their help. Now NCERT has come out with a set of learning outcomes not only for the primary stage but for the whole elementary stage of education to address the issues of quality and equal achievement on the part of learners. The contribution of the community in the boundary wall and main gate, and availability of safe drinking water was below average. The main source of availability of water was either tap water, or water tank in the schools, and this caused serious concern about the usefulness of the toilet facilities in the schools. On the other hand, the availability of toilet facilities for the CWSN was either negligible or very poor, causing a violation of the Government guidelines in this regard. Schools and the main reason appeared to be the GOI programme on Swachhata Abhiyaan in the schools. As far as the contribution by the community was concerned to the various parameters of availability of toilets, that too was very poor, and could not be considered a matter of satisfactory effort by the community.
It was also a matter of appreciation that the community had provided additional teaching and non-teaching staff. Female teachers were responding most of the teachers were belonging to the ST social category. Few teachers reported that they were getting help from the community as far as the implementation of CCE in schools was concerned. The teachers had reported that PTR as prescribed under relevant statutory norms was followed in nearly 60% of schools. The details of community support were explained by the teachers, such as, support was not provided by the community on the counts that additional teachers were required due to the high rate of enrolment, and on this issue, community support was always required.
The present research report explores about contribution and challenges of the community on the quality education at the elementary level in context to the provisions of the RTE Act, 2009, but also rigorously studies the present existing practices and conditions in the elementary level schools of the Bhoirymbong Block spread over nine clusters of Ribhoi District of Meghalaya State, whose stakeholders were approached in this regard. The key recommendations of this report are as follows:
1. There is a dire requirement to inform and involve the community with regard to their role in their child’s education and the minimum institutional facilities they are entitled to receive and should understand their rights to demand from the school authorities.
2. School Management should be closely monitored by the State and should make rightful advancements as per the need.
3. There should be a centralized system to develop a monitoring framework to keep a check on the working of SMC and should be catalyzed for the benefit of the child’s utmost care and education.
4. From an implementation research perspective, it is highly recommended to evaluate the pupil-teacher ratio at scale to understand the issue further in the country.
5. Further, there is a need to compare and analyze how poor facilities can hamper the quality of education, affecting the youth in later years to contribute to the economy.
6. While most surveys tend to capture the learning levels of children from time to time, it’s high time to re-visit the school system and make informed research-based required modifications.
7. Organizing intensive orientation and awareness programmes for the community
members in a decentralized manner on the role and functions of SMC members, monitoring practices, achieving learning outcomes for children in the schools, etc., and should be made a regular practice and replicated from time to time in a specified schedule.
Surprisingly, it was reported that un-aided and private schools follow a completely different trend of school management of through SMC, which exercise monitoring and financial powers. A separate SMC is being constituted - including all segments of society and is not dominated by the ST community in some cases, deflecting from the Government norms, thereby not fulfilling the norms under RTE Act, 2009 and improper reporting was being practiced by such schools as well.
... The site for this research, SCMS is part of an old private philanthropic institution established before independence for poor Indian students that later became a (Dhankar, 2017;Kumar, 2019;Nawani, 2013Nawani, , 2017Sharma, 2019). CCE, in its original form was conceptualised as a set of child friendly assessment practices, predicated upon a decentralised system with less emphasis on reporting and more on engagement with teachers (Yagnamurthy, 2017) and made a mandatory provision under RTE. ...
Teachers’ work in India is impacted by the ongoing restructuring of school education that incorporates simultaneous attempts at reform and regulation. Child-friendly assessment policy instituted by the local bureaucracy leads to intensification of teachers’ administrative roles, drawing their attention away from critical pedagogic ones. Limitations in policy interpretation are found to be in response to the official discourse of efficiency that manifests in performative measures of accountability inconsistent with the intended reforms. In this ethnographic case study in an urban middle school for poor, teachers’ attempts to comply with instruments of accountability while adapting to changing pedagogic relations with their students and achieve coherence in their identities are examined. The paper draws attention to the contrasts between models of good teaching held by teachers, vis-à-vis the official discourse. It argues for a reworking of the existing model of accountability towards incorporating a cultural-political conception of pedagogy.
... The RTE Act, they claim, encouraged multiplier and unequal education structure rather than the Common School System (CSS). The provision to reimburse the cost of education for critical sections of children in private-unaided schools has been placed with no time frame (Jha & Parvati, 2010;Nawani, 2017). More than half of the states and union territories have not implemented this provision and those that have implemented show considerable gaps (Sarin et al., 2018). ...
Right to Education (RTE) Act is intended to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children aged 6–14 years. This article examines key constituents of elementary education in view of the RTE Act such as current attendance rate, types of institutions, medium of instruction, neighbourhood schools, Monthly per capita expenditure on elementary education (MPCEE)and incentives during pre- and post-RTE period using National Sample Survey Organisation’s 64th (2007–2008) and 71st (2014) round of unit level data. The result shows that far from the universalisation, exclusion is getting entrenched across gender, sector, and socio-religious and economic groups. Female children, children from deprived socio-religious groups, rural areas and from the bottom MPCE quintile have not only fared lower in most of the studied parameters during the pre-RTE period, but the gap from their counterpart has widened immensely during the post-RTE period. Free education has declined and monthly per capita expenditure on elementary education has increased sharply. Children are moving out of the government to private schools. The findings raise serious questions on the intention of the government to fulfil its mandate under RTE.
... For more inclusive and integrated schooling system, the Act commissioned private unaided school to provide 25 percent of seats for children belonging to weaker and disadvantaged sections, however more than half of the states and union territories have not implemented this provision and those implemented show considerable gaps (Sarin et al. 2018). The act failed to establish norms essential for building a common school system, as envisaged by the Kothari Commission in its report and rather legitimizes a stratified schooling in private and public spaces (Nawani, 2017). While school education has been made free and compulsory, the government has not taken adequate move for the disadvantaged sections of children, to access them to schools. ...
RTE Act is intended to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children aged 6-14 years. This paper examines exclusion in the elementary education during the pre and post phase of RTE (2009) using NSSO 64th (2007-08) and 71st (2014) round of unit level data. Far from the universalisation, there remain exclusions across gender, sector, socio-religious and economic groups. In terms of current educational attendance and literacy rate, rural-urban, male-female gaps have narrowed, however, Muslim groups remained excluded even more than ST and SC. There is a marked shift among the children from government to private schools. The concept of a neighbourhood school has been found to be fading away. Incidence of detention has still been observed and is found to be more in the rural areas. Free education has declined invariably in all the categories under study. MPCEE has increased three fold during the study period and exclusion in terms of MPCEE has widened. Findings raise questions on the intention of the government to fulfil its mandate under RTE.
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