Right to Education - Need for Innovative Approaches

Picture Courtesy: The Hindu

Almost a year ago, I enthusiastically wrote about the recognition of Right to Education (RTE) as a Fundamental Right in India. Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 was expected to directly benefit close to ten million children who did not attend school. According to The Hindu, a leading English daily in India, “the enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education.” On April 1, 2011 Union Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal released the one-year report card of RTE. Few had expected that in a year the Act would dramatically raise the number of school going children in the country. The explicit commitment was viewed as a beginning to identify and implement innovative measures to realize the goal of providing primary education to the target population. Like most other official policies the RTE turns out to be more about making the politically correct gestures without adapting to socially flexible techniques for achieving the proposed goals. Implementation of RTE is challenged on many fronts but more critically there appears to be an inveterate aversion to review and adjust policy.

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