Four years after this landmark legislation made it mandatory for the State to provide free and compulsory education to every child aged 6-14 years, ground reports indicate that 92 percent of primary schools are non-compliant with the Act, and there’s a shortage of 700,000 teachers countrywide
NEXT MONTH, THE HISTORIC Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 — the scams-tainted Congress-led UPA II government’s sole education legislative achievement which came into force on April 1, 2010 — completes four years. But four years on after this landmark — albeit hastily drafted — legislation, which makes it mandatory for the State (i.e Central, state and local governments) to provide free and compulsory elementary education (class I-VIII) to every child between 6-14 years of age and prescribes minimum infrastructure, teacher-pupil and other norms for all schools, there’s little cause for cheer as the country’s state governments have failed to implement the omnibus Act. Ground reports from across the country indicate that the RTE Act has remained substantially unimplemented by state governments gripped by financial constraints and teacher shortages which routinely haunt government schools even as the nation’s estimated 80,000 private schools are struggling with the burden imposed upon them by the Act, to provide highly subsidised elementary education to poor children in their neighbourhood.
The Union human resource development (HRD) ministry in its RTE: The 3rd Year report released in January acknowledges that a large number of the country’s 1.1 million government and aided schools have failed to meaningfully improve their teacher-pupil ratios or upgrade buildings, toilets, drinking water facilities and playgrounds within the three-year time limit set by the RTE Act. This time frame given to all schools to meet infrastructure and teacher-pupil ratios mandated by s.19 and Schedule of the RTE Act, expired on March 31 last year even as the Union government has declined to extend or commit to a new deadline.
RTE: The 3rd Year admits that 31 percent of primary schools still don’t provide separate toilet facilities for girl children; 44 percent are without disability ramps; 39 percent don’t have boundary walls, and 40 percent lack kitchen/sheds to prepare free mid-day meals. Moreover, only 37 percent of the country’s 1.1 million government/aided schools meet the prescribed teacher-pupil ratio of 1:30, and 9 percent (over 90,000) make do with only one teacher.
A detailed progress report on elementary education (classes I-VIII) including student enrolment, number of teachers and infrastructure provision across the country, for the first time RTE: The 3rd Year touches the subject of learning outcomes (“this publication focuses on the quality aspect of RTE Act,” says Pallam Raju, Union HRD minister in the foreword). According to the report, class VIII students in 18 states countrywide performed below average in science; students in 17 states fared poorly in maths competency, and are below average in language learning in 18 states.
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The RTE Forum, a Delhi-based national coalition of over 10,000 NGOs, educationists and social activists, believes ground realities are worse. Its The Stocktaking Report 2012-13 estimates that 92 percent of primary schools nationwide are non-compliant with the infrastructure norms mandated by the Act, and that there’s a shortage of 700,000 teachers countrywide. “Eight million children continue to be out of school; most school management committees (SMCs) have been established in an undemocratic manner and have not become fully functional; registration of private schools on the basis of compliance with the norms laid down in the Act has hardly begun; and there are serious shortfalls in the recruitment of teachers and shortcomings in facilities for their training,” says the report in a damning indictment of the floundering UPA-II government’s showpiece legislation.
Ambarish Rai, the Delhi-based national convener of the RTE Forum, believes the prime cause of ineffective implementation of the Act is grossly inadequate budgetary provision. “It’s a national shame that four years after the Act was passed, 92 percent of schools are still RTE non-compliant. This is mainly because of the failure of the Central and state governments to provide for its implementation. In the Union Budget 2013-14, there was no significant enhancement in the allocation for education. Provision for RTE-Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA — primary education for all) was Rs.27,258 crore, a mere 6.6 percent increase over last year, which barely covers inflation and can’t possibly satisfy the huge requirements of RTE implementation. Another equally pertinent issue is improper utilisation of allocated outlay — only half the money allocated has, in fact, been used. As a result the three-year period for upgradation has elapsed without the majority of schools improving infrastructure and teacher-pupil ratios. Now the second deadline of 2015 which requires all teachers to be professionally qualified is set to expire without much success achieved. Unless action is taken on a war footing, there is a clear danger of the Act’s objectives remaining on paper with millions of children being denied their fundamental right to free, compulsory and quality education,” warns Rai.
With the Central government the major contributor — the cost of implementing the RTE Act is shared between Centre-states in the ratio 65:35 — to RTE-SSA, grudging outlays for education in the past four Union budgets of the UPA-II government have stymied the Act. In April, 2010 when the Act came into force, the Union government committed to investing Rs.231,233 crore over a five-year period for implementation of the Act. Four years on, a mere Rs.88,813 crore has been allocated to RTE-SSA — clearly inadequate for the country’s ramshackle 1 million government schools to improve their infrastructure facilities and teacher-pupil ratios.
SHOCKINGLY, WHILE FOR government-run primaries (now transformed into elementaries) unable to meet the March 31, 2013 RTE compliance deadline, it’s business as usual, for the country’s estimated 400,000 unrecognised private ‘budget’ schools which have mushroomed countrywide as a refuge from dysfunctional government schools, the past year has been a period of great anxiety with the sword of closure hanging over them. S. 19 of the RTE Act stipulates that schools which haven’t upgraded teacher-pupil ratios, buildings, toilets, drinking water facilities and playgrounds etc by March 31, 2013 “shall” be derecognised and forcibly shut down by the competent authority (municipal and/or state governments).
The draconian s.19 which requires private schools “to fulfill such norms and standards at its own expenses” apart, s.18 (1) requires all non-government schools to obtain a recognition certificate from the local or state government, failing which they will not be allowed to conduct classes (s. 18 (4)). School promoters who continue to dispense education without a recognition certificate are obliged to pay a fine of up to Rs.1 lakh and Rs.10,000 per day during which such contravention continues. Significantly, such recognition is mandatory only for schools “other than a school established, owned or controlled by the appropriate government”.
According to the Centre for Civil Society (CCS), a top-ranked Delhi-based think-tank, this selective provision of the RTE Act has already forced closure of 1,490 private low-cost schools with an aggregate enrolment of 300,000 children. Another 5,507 budget schools with a total enrolment of 1.1 million children have been issued notice of closure. Moreover, even as off-the-record stories of education inspectors and bureaucrats extorting huge bribes for real and imaginary infringement of ss. 18 and 19 are doing the rounds, ominous clouds loom over India’s 400,000 unlicenced budget schools, which have proliferated in urban slums, tier II towns and even in tiny villages countrywide. The response of small-time, for-profit education entrepreneurs to India’s poor quality government primaries characterised by crumbling infrastructure, multi-grade classrooms, chronic teacher absenteeism, English language aversion and poor learning outcomes, the aggregate enrolment in private budget schools is estimated at a massive 40-50 million children from low-income but high-aspiration households countrywide.
“Pressure to shut down private budget schools will intensify in the near future. The provisions of the poorly drafted RTE Act allow government to encroach upon the freedom and autonomy of private schools with budget schools worst affected. Through the National Independent School Alliance (NISA), we are trying to educate government authorities that budget schools are serving poor parents and should be allowed to continue. Many budget schools run by NRIs and NGOs are shutting down on their own because of fear of being harassed and getting entangled in litigation. When the Act became law in 2010, my opinion was that it is a mixed bag of good and bad provisions. Four years later, it’s clear the negative provisions of the Act are being enforced while the good ones are being neglected. So as a law it’s a mixed blessing, but in implementation it’s an unmitigated disaster,” says Dr. Parth Shah, president of CCS, forthrightly.
NEVERTHELESS SHAH derives some comfort that as a result of NISA’s efforts, the Delhi state government has declared a one-year moratorium on the closure of private schools for non-compliance with infrastructure provisions of the RTE Act. Last year, the state’s directorate of education issued a notice stating that no school which was established pre-RTE (before April 2010) will be shut down. “We hope this one-year moratorium will be extended,” says Shah.
While private budget schools, which are embarrassing government primaries, are the prime target of notorious inspectors and bureaucrats of the education ministries of state governments, the country’s 80,000 recognised unaided private schools are struggling to devise ways and means to provide highly subsidised elementary education (classes I-VIII) to poor children in their neighbourhoods as mandated by s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act. This section requires all private schools to reserve 25 percent capacity in class I for poor children in their neighbourhood and provide them free education until class VIII. The tuition of EWS (economically weaker sections) children thus admitted is to be partly paid by the State (i.e, the Central, state, local governments) which are obliged to reimburse private school tuition fees equivalent to the per student expenditure incurred by the state government in its own schools.
This controversial and contested provision of the Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in a judgement delivered in April, 2012, in Society for Unaided Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union of India (Writ Petition (c) No. 95 of 2010) by a wafer-thin 2-1 majority inter alia on the ground that the RTE Act doesn’t mandate the State itself to provide free and compulsory education to children in the age group 6-14. It can also do so through private schools. However, the judgement substantially diluted the impact of s.12 (1) (c) by exempting minority (and boarding) schools from its purview.
Following the apex court’s verdict, most state governments (barring Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland) have notified rules for enforcing the 25 percent RTE quota in private unaided schools. However, the exemption of minority schools from the ambit of s.12 (1) (c) has generated considerable confusion within the educracy and public over the definition of ‘minority’ institutions, and has prompted a stampede among school promoters and managements to apply for minority status. Educationists fear this rush for minority status will open the floodgates of corruption within the education ministry whose officials are notorious for shakedowns and extortion. Already, numerous BEOs (block education officers) who have been vested with wide discretionary powers including determining the limits of the ‘neighbourhood’, accepting RTE admission applications under s.12 (1) (c) and selecting poor neighbourhood children eligible for admission, are being accused of corruption and extortion.
Nevertheless, implementation of s.12 (1) (c) of the RTE Act varies widely from state to state. For instance in Delhi, reservation of a 25 percent quota in class I for poor neighbourhood children is a fait accompli. For the past four years, the national capital’s 4,000 private unaided schools have been admitting and providing subsidised education to EWS children. Despite this, the Delhi state government has not reimbursed private school managements even one year’s tuition fee determined by it as Rs.14,280 per student per annum. “So far, we have not received any tuition fees reimbursement. With our tuition fees already regulated by the state government and costs of development and maintenance constantly rising, many school managements are finding it increasingly impossible to continue operations,” says R.C. Jain, president of the Delhi State Public Schools Management Association (estb. 1992) which has a membership of 800 private schools in Delhi NCR.
SIMILARLY IN THE southern state of Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million), private unaided schools, which admitted the first batch of RTE quota students in June 2012, are yet to receive the first instalment of fee reimbursement (Rs.5,000-11,000 per RTE quota student per year). Repeated representations to the state government to fast-track reimbursement of these rock-bottom tuition fees have fallen on deaf ears. (see Education News p.18).
Private school managements in the neighbouring state of Karnataka (pop. 61 million) which admitted students under the RTE quota in June 2012 are marginally better off, having received the first year’s tuition fee reimbursement (Rs.11,848 per student per year) from the newly elected Congress state government last month. “After two years of constant follow-up, protests and several representations to the state government, these cheques have been released. Yet this is the belated reimbursement for the academic year 2012-13. The dues for 2013-14 which ends this month are pending. Nevertheless the tuition fee reimbursed is grossly inadequate. Our member schools are incurring much greater expense for educating quota students,” says A. Maryappa, the Bangalore-based secretary of the Karnataka Unaided Schools Management Association (KUSMA) which has a membership of 1,800 schools across the state.
Unsurprisingly in bordering Andhra Pradesh (pop. 84 million), where popular demand for bifurcation and establishment of a new Telangana state has crippled governance for the past three years — as we go to press, Parliament has passed the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, 2014 paving the way for carving Telangana state out of Andhra Pradesh — private schools have declined to implement s. 12 (1) (c) until the state government fixes an “acceptable” reimbursement fee and draws a timeline for payout. “We have had practically no governance for the past three years. As a result even though the state government has notified the RTE Act, it has not fixed the reimbursement amount or the process through which it will disburse payment. We are willing to implement the 25 percent quota for EWS children provided the state government specifies a reasonable amount as reimbursement. In its own schools, the government spends Rs.25,000 per student per year, but to private schools it wants to pay a much lower amount while making it clear that it will reimburse only the tuition fee, and not expenses incurred on books, uniforms, textbooks, etc. If we take on the burden of providing free education to underprivileged children, it will spell the death knell for many private, especially budget schools,” says S. Sreenivas Reddy, president of the Hyderabad-based Andhra Pradesh Recognised Private Schools Managements Association which has a membership of 14,000 schools statewide.
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In a significant departure from the model Central RTE Rules, the AP government in its State RTE Rules has divided the 25 percent reservation quota into 10 percent for scheduled castes, 4 percent for scheduled tribes, 5 percent for HIV-affected children and 6 percent for children from households with annual incomes below Rs.60,000 — making implementation a nightmarish prospect for private schools.
In Uttar Pradesh (pop. 200 million) too, the state government has deviated from the Central RTE Rules, diluting the admission eligibility requirements under s.12 (1) (c) in its RTE Rules, notified in July 2011. As per the UP State RTE Rules, a child qualifies for admission in a private school under s.12 (1) (c) only if she fails to secure admission into a government school.
“Since the number of government schools in Uttar Pradesh is huge and every village has a government school, not many children will qualify for admission under the RTE quota,” admits Nitishwar Kumar, education secretary of the UP state government. This creative interpretation of s.12 (1) (c) by the UP government has largely spared the state’s private schools from admitting poor neighbourhood children into their institutions.
IN WEST BENGAL, though the State RTE Rules do not make admission into private schools dependent on children being denied entry into government schools, the overwhelming majority of private non-minority schools in the state have simply ignored s.12 (1) (c). According to a review report released in early January by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the apex monitoring body for implementation of the RTE Act, the state government is yet to frame guidelines for implementing s.12 (1) (c).
But if the RTE Act and the mandate of s. 12 (1) (c) is a dead letter in West Bengal (pop. 90 million), it’s also because public and parental awareness of the reserved 25 percent RTE quota in private schools is very low. Pradip Agarwal, CEO of the Heritage Group of Institutions which runs the CISCE-affiliated Heritage School, Kolkata, says that admission applications from low-income households in the school’s neighbourhood under s. 12 (1) (c) are negligible. “Despite advertising in the newspapers and our school notice board we have not received any applications for admission into our 25 percent class I reserved quota seats,” says Agarwal.
The NCPCR report is scathing in its indictment of not just West Bengal, but all the other 28 states of the Indian Union for going “against the letter and spirit” of the RTE Act. The report highlights “major gaps” in most state RTE Rules regarding the provision of free education, age proof documentation, composition and formation of school management committees (SMCs), neighbourhood schools and enforcement of 25 percent reservation in private schools. For instance, while the Act clearly states that no child shall be denied admission due to lack of age proof and that a declaration by parents of the child is sufficient, many of the RTE Rules drafted by state governments ask for an affidavit to confirm the child’s age.
According to the report, several state government rules relating to composition and formation of school management committees run contrary to the model Central government rules. While the model rules provide that the SMCs should elect a chairperson and vice chairpersons from among parent members, several state governments have ignored this provision. The Andhra Pradesh RTE rules say the sarpanch (headman) shall be the chairperson of SMCs in rural areas and the councillor/corporator in municipal areas. Assam has authorised a government official — District Education Officer — to certify the eligibility of the chairperson based on criteria such as educational qualification and aptitude. Moreover, the Gujarat state rules permit a member of the management or the trust of the school to be included in SMCs.
“It’s shocking that state governments have diluted SMCs, many of whom are being constituted in an undemocratic manner. The RTE Act mandates that three-fourths of the members of all SMCs must be parents or guardians and that the chairperson should be elected from among parent members. This provision is being blatantly violated by state governments and private schools. For instance, in Delhi we have made a representation to the government to amend the state RTE Rules to mandate that the chairperson of SMCs is a parent and not the school principal. Moreover some private schools are openly violating the RTE Act by not constituting SMCs. Parents and the local community are important stakeholders in the education process and all managements of government and private schools are legally obliged to constitute SMCs to ensure effective implementation of the RTE Act,” says Ashok Agarwal, the well-known Delhi-based advocate, education activist and convenor of NGO Social Jurist.
Yet even as state governments countrywide have conspicuously failed to implement the RTE Act, the biggest challenge for India’s 28 state governments is to fill teacher vacancies and upgrade the skills and knowledge of 7 million primary school teachers to standards prescribed by the RTE Act. S. 23 (1) of the Act has set a deadline of 2015 for all teachers to attain minimum qualifications. Sadly, in the matter of implementation of this vital provision of the RTE Act as well, state governments have failed. Pass percentages in the Teacher Eligibility Tests (TETs) range between 0.3 to 6 percent countrywide..gif)
Well-trained and committed teachers are urgently required in the country’s primary — particularly 1 million government — schools. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2013, an annual survey which assesses the reading and numeracy skills of students enrolled in primary schools in the rural hinterland countrywide, there’s a sharp downtrend in learning outcomes.
ASER 2013 REVEALS that the percentage of class V children who can read class II textbooks has decreased from an already dismal 52.8 percent in 2009 to a worse 46.9 percent in 2013. Likewise, the percentage of class V children who can solve simple three-digits by one-digit division sums (which they should have learned in class III) has inched up to an abysmal 25.16 percent. “The guarantee of education is meaningless if there is no satisfactory learning. There are serious implications for India’s equity and growth if basic learning outcomes do not improve soon,” warn the authors of ASER 2013. Despite this, s.16 of the populist RTE Act mandates that “no child admitted in a school shall be held back in any class or expelled from school till completion of elementary education”.
Quite clearly four years on, the RTE Act has failed to upgrade teaching-learning standards in the country’s 1 million dysfunctional government primaries characterised by ramshackle infrastructure, obsolete curriculums, ill-trained, uncommitted teachers, and poor learning outcomes while succeeding in diluting the autonomy of unaided private schools. Nevertheless some informed academics and educationists believe the RTE Act is well-intentioned legislation which needs to be given time to impact school education.
“The RTE Act marks a historic moment for the children of India. It is for the first time in India’s history that children have been guaranteed their right to quality elementary education by the State with the help of civil society. We should give it time before announcing a verdict on it. Every reform that has taken place in our country has taken time, some even decades. Look at electoral reforms which have taken several decades. Therefore educational reform has to necessarily be pursued in a patient manner. Quick results can’t be achieved in education because working with students requires so many levels of communication across the system. You can’t force people to teach well by keeping them, for instance, in school from 9 a.m to 5 p.m as they’re doing in Haryana. That can’t ensure good teaching and makes for unhappy teachers. Unhappy teachers can’t make children happy. Reforms have to be thought out, discussed and analysed. That process takes time,” says Prof. Krishna Kumar, professor of education at University of Delhi, and former director of NCERT.
Admittedly, though there is little cause for celebration on the fourth anniversary of the RTE Act, 2009 which became law on April 1, 2010, the first steps of a long march towards an important objective — universal primary education — have been taken, even if belatedly. Yet the pace of change is painfully slow with over 92 percent of the country’s 1.30 million primary schools having missed the upgradation of infrastructure/teacher-pupil norms deadline of March 31 last year, and are heading towards missing the second 2015 deadline for upgrading teacher qualifications.
Curiously, the hastily drafted RTE Act which was rushed through Parliament without adequate debate makes no mention of the government obligation to raise the annual outlay for education (Centre plus states) from 3.5 percent of GDP to 6 percent as recommended by the Kothari Commission way back in 1966. Instead, its prime intent seems to be to incrementally pass on government responsibility to educate the masses to private institutions on its (government’s) terms and conditions, while deflecting public attention from the hard questions pertaining to functioning of the country’s 1 million government schools, which are constitutionally mandated to universalise elementary education.
This strategy bodes ill for the world’s largest child population as the likely outcome is creeping destruction of the country’s 80,000 private schools, which against heavy odds are setting standards in K-12 education. It’s a dangerous strategy invested with ominous portents.
With Aruna Ravikumar (Hyderabad), Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) & Apoorv Srivastava (Lucknow)