Right to education Act enacted on paper, but where is the implementation

When Right to Education (RTE) Act was enacted with much fanfare in 2010, it seemed for some time that India is heading towards a moment that will turn out to be the path-breaking moment in India’s history. But, all those illusions got swashed away within a year of its enactment. The act, which was passed initially with the envision of constitutionally conferring the right to education to all the children between 6 to 14 years of age irrespective of their economic background, has failed miserably in the last 4 years since it has been penned down and voted-in in the parliament. The act, which was expected to drastically improve the literacy rate in the country by allowing children from weaker section of the society to have free access to education and controlling the drop-out rates from the elementary schools, hasn’t been able to live up to the expectations.



So, the first question which immediately comes to our mind is that why has the act failed in delivering the desired results/output. Yes, the answer is simple: ineffective implementation of the act.  But, we need to dig further into it to find the valid reasoning behind the ineffective implementation. One of the prominent reasons which come out is the government’s lack of efforts in improving the quality of education given in govt. and govt. sponsored schools. There has been literally no emphasis on the quality of education meted out to the students in these govt. schools. Further, hiring of incompetent and below standard faculty and teachers and no regular monitoring of their work by an institutional body have been cited as the reasons for the abysmal standard of education in govt. schools.



  The act also mandated that 25% of the seats in the private schools must be reserved for the students coming from financially weaker sections of the society and the expense of all those students would be borne out by the government. But, the lack of clarity on the issue between the govt. and the schools on how and when the schools would be paid back prevented many schools from reserving the seats. And, those that reserved seats last year still haven’t been reimbursed, which has made schools more apprehensive of the functionality of the whole process. The govt. needs to understand that it’s not the duty of private schools only to provide good quality education. Public schools need to function in tandem to achieve the larger goal. On the other hand, the lack of proper information and guidance for the parents about the act haven’t helped the cause either.

The act also targeted at reducing child labour and preventing children from turning into street beggars by putting them into a process of schooling. But, the desired penetration in these matters hasn’t been achieved as child labour and child beggars are still very much a grim reality in the society. The essence of the RTE act has been lost in these 4 years of transition. The govt. needs to come out with a much clear and comprehensive process to tackle these issues. Proper guidelines on reimbursements to private schools, establishing of help centres for trouble shooting the queries of the parents regarding the act, collaborating with various NGO’s to get children out of the vicious circle of child labouring and begging, hiring competent and qualified faculty for the govt. schools. These are just some of the steps which can give a good head start for proper implementation of the act in coming years. Hope it happens as “education” has the power to change the phase of this nation.