Right to Education one step closer

July 21, 2009: The Indian Express

Years after it was first drafted, the legislation to provide free and compulsory education to all children aged 6 to 14 was passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday. On the 100-day agenda of the UPA government, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008 promises 25 per cent seats reserved in private schools for needy children, that all children will be promoted till standard VIII and also sets out logistical and infrastructure-related standards that every school must have.

The Bill seeks to achieve 10 broad objectives which include free and compulsory education, obligation on the part of state to provide education, nature of curriculum consistent with Constitution, quality, focus on social responsibility and obligation of teachers and de-bureaucratisation in admissions besides a provision for neighbourhood schools to be set up by states within three years.

“Nobody can say no to admission to children. We are sitting on a great opportunity. If we lose it, I do not know what will happen to our country,¶ HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said.

The bill was passed by voice vote after negating several amendments moved by Moinul Hassan of the CPM. While the Rajya Sabha debate threw up a slew of questions on the funding formula and Centre-state fund sharing arrangement for implementation of the ambitious provisions of the legislation, Sibal claimed that this was not a cause for worry and an expert group would be set up to provide inputs to the 13th Finance Commission on the issue.

“Once Parliament passes it, it will be a fundamental right of the child. There is no way in the world that we will not have finances,¶ Sibal said in his reply to the House. Strongly advocating the passage of the bill, Sibal said though it was a difficult task, the government could not have waited any longer. “We have to do it. We have wasted a whole lot of time.¶

On the issue of private schools reserving 25 per cent seats for students from weaker sections, Sibal said it was for the state governments to implement the provision.

During the debate, Rajya Sabha members voiced their concern about the lack of clarity on the funding arrangement for its provisions. Najma Heptullah sought to know whether minority schools would also be covered under the 25 per cent reservation scheme and how would a neighbourhood school be defined.

Santosh Bagrodia from the Congress pointed out that the 25 per cent reservation clause may be violative of the Constitution and needs looking into.

P Rajeev from the CPM said the Bill must also clearly say that each school must at least be of the Kendriya Vidyalaya standard to ensure that every child gets quality education.

K Malaisamy of the AIADMK said parity between private and government schools must be brought in to bridge the gap between students who pass out from both.

N K Singh of the JD(U) expressed his disappointment with the bill not coming with a clear financial settlement pointing out that there have been four different estimates of the Centre-state fund sharing.

CPM’s D Raja called for inclusion of pre-school level children also within the ambit of the bill and covering children from Class I to the secondary level.

Of 230 RS MPs, only 54 to see it through

It was listed on the Legislative Business for the day but after a five-and-a-half hour long debate, as the Right to Education Bill went up for a vote in the Rajya Sabha, the Opposition members kept their voices low. If all 29 of them present had shouted as they usually do, they may have ended up shouting down the 25 Congress MPs in the House at the time. There was no division and the Opposition did not want the landmark Bill defeated. But the fact is that in the 230-member strong House of Elders, the government-opposition ratio at the time was 25-29. 

The Right to Education Bill had been introduced in the Rajya Sabha on December 15 last year before the Lok Sabha elections to prevent it from lapsing. It was listed for debate and passage for on Monday. The day-long debate saw MPs making points about a range of things — from several lacunae in the Bill regarding financing to some MPs bringing up the subject of Hindi teaching in schools and some giving alternative definitions of education. But at no point during the debate did the total number of MPs present cross 60. 

It is a Bill that has been pending for at least seven years (since 2002, when under the NDA, the Right to Education went on to become a fundamental right). Plenty of work remains on the Bill as the funding is not clear, nor have rules for making it functional been framed (each state will do so separately). But once the Lok Sabha also passes it, it will be a law which UPA 2.0 will tom-tom as historic and may well be as much of an achievement for this government as the RTI or the NREGA was for UPA 1.0.

With no exception           

A bill giving children the right to education was finally passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday.

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill comes seven years after Parliament amended the Constitution to incorporate that right, and in its current form appears to address most of the key concerns. Its eventual passage through Parliament must therefore be followed up with responsive implementation. In the last few years, there has been a deepening in India of the state and people’s appreciation of the need to hasten inclusive education. By inducting private and unaided schools in this effort, and not placing the onus only on government-funded or -assisted schools, the legislation has the potential to address issues larger than just the provision of education for all.

The bill provides children in the six-to-fourteen age group with the right to free and compulsory education in a ¶neighbourhood school¶. This obviously includes government schools. But in a departure of public policy towards school vouchers, it entitles certain disadvantaged and weaker groups to 25 per cent of seats in government-aided (including Kendriya Vidyalayas) and unaided (that is, private) schools. Unaided schools will be reimbursed an amount equal to their tuition fee or the per-capita student expenditure in government schools, whichever is lower. The success of the programme will be in the detail: how accountable will the referral authority be, how large-hearted schools can be in averting differentiation in their classes, how inventive orientation programmes for lateral admission will be, how incidentals will be funded. But for a society as desperate to break the perpetuation of class stratification as India should be, this shift towards what amounts to a common school system is welcome. It begins to set right the pyramid in affirmative action programmes, in making more equal the opportunities any Indian has to make good on the strength of her education.

Any number of case studies has shown that quotas in higher education have less than optimum outcomes because of the inequalities left unaddressed at the lower education stage.

It is therefore important the implementation be as transparent as can be. Policy must be clear on the mechanism by which students will be picked for certain schools, so that local patronage and corruption chains do not develop. And even as the right to education is operationalised at the earliest, there must be keen monitoring of enrolments and some checks of standards.

This is because, for the first time, by policy, the wall of separation between state and private schools has been breached. Delivery and regulatory mechanisms in this uncharted area must be refined based on real-time experience.