Radical proposals in new education bill

New Delhi, April 28: Tucked away in the Right to Education draft bill—framed by the HRD Ministry, which is presently in consultation with the Law Ministry—are two proposals that might spell change with a capital C in the primary education sector, if the bill is through.
According to the first proposal, schools all over India, aided or un-aided, will have to admit at least 25 percent students from the ‘neighbourhood’, which is defined as per age: within 1 km for primary classes and 3 km after Class V.
This means that even private schools will have to open their doors to children living in the neighbourhood even as the government pays for them. The catch here is that the government will not pay the fees but the “cost per learner”—the amount spent on educating a child in a government school—which is expected to ruffle the private school lobby.
While those associated with the drafting of the bill say that it is the “PPP (public-private partnership) approach with a difference” and a good thing, others believe that the government is shirking responsibility and is expecting the private sector to do what it should be doing much like governments in countries like the US, China and Taiwan.
The other big proposal in the bill is establishing a norm or a standard for schools. While the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan recognises a variety of schools as legitimate and as constituting educational institutions, this bill lays down a standard for schools that the state must meet in five years and will remove traditional or informal schools from the ambit of what would be recognised as schools.
The Right to Education bill is similar to the one drafted in 2005, but since 2002, when education at elementary level was made a fundamental right, the onus of ensuring that the child goes to school has been on the state rather than the parent. The bill also proposes radical measures like no exams or testing of any kind for children as a prerequisite for admissions. It also takes away the obligation of producing a birth certificate which has been a major impediment for children being admitted to schools. If the bill becomes a law, the parents’ word about the child’s birth will have to be taken as fact.
The UPA has committed itself to education expenditure of up to 6 percent of the GDP over the five-year period (2004-09), but the cost of schooling all children had supposedly held back the bill during the NDA’s term, and now the UPA’s. This, despite the fact that right to education is a fundamental right after the Constitution was amended in 2002.
On February 14 this year, the Prime Minister had announced that the Right to Education Bill would be introduced in this budget session. While the educationists are optimistic about the bill making it to Parliament before next year’s elections and the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission have also given it the green light, others believe that as the budget session might be shorter than envisaged, the bill might be scuttled yet again.
SEEMA CHISHTI
Posted online: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 0006 hrs
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