Draft of Response to Right to Education

29^th December 2009

To

The Hon’ble Minister

HRD

The Right to Education (RTE) Act is indeed a very noble gesture and a worthy national goal. However, we would like to bring some points to your notice regarding the purpose and implementation of the Act.

Purpose of the Act

Let us examine the reasons why these children lack education:

• Lack of motivation owing to the fact that the parents themselves are not educated.
• Parents wish the child to work or stay at home to look after the family when the parents are out at work.
• The culture of learning is not there in the home environment.
• Government schools are not inspiring enough – they lack even the basic amenities. Even if the building is there, there are no teachers.
• The learning at school is not related to the real life of the students.

Considering the above points, some questions about the RTE:

• Have we defined what ‘education’ these children need in order to lead a fruitful life?
• By ‘education’, do we mean basic literacy and numeracy? If so, the child may not require 8 to 10 years of schooling; even 2 to 3 years would suffice. That could be followed by focused ‘vocational’ training or education, which would be able to generate employment opportunities for these children.
• Considering the divide in the home environments of the children (existing students and the neighbourhood ones), would the same education style and content be suitable for all? Would it not be detrimental for the children in the long run?

Concerns about implementation of the Act

As parents of children in a private educational institution, we also have some concerns about the implementation of this act, which we have elucidated here.

1. Right to Education is definitely a fundamental right, but ensuring this right is the responsibility of the Government. Is it fair to really impose the implementation on private individuals / organizations?

2. The impact of RTE implementation on private, unaided schools would be manifold:

a. The Government will not refund the fees of the neighbourhood students at the same rate as the fees paid by the other students. This will lead to a financial crunch for the school, which will in turn impact every aspect of the school administration and environment, such as:

i. Infrastructure maintenance

ii. Facilities provided

iii. Staff salaries

iv. Expansion plans

b. To offset the financial crunch, the school will have to increase the number of students in each section, which will render the current CBSE reforms utterly ineffective. The CBSE reforms are attainable only if the class strength is kept low.

3. As parents, there are some other basic concerns we have:

a. We have opted for a particular education system for our child and have agreed to pay a certain amount of fee to the school to ensure that the system chosen by us is provided by the school. The fees paid by us and the environment provided by the school are on the basis of a pact between the school management and the parents. We believe that as citizens having freedom of thought and expression, we are allowed to make this decision for our children and expect it to be honored. We are entitled to articulate our choice of school and education system, suitability of the school for our children and pay the required fees to ensure our choice is met. We fail to see how a Government law can prevent us from doing that.

b. As a private individual, I pay an education cess on my income. This cess is supposed to be my contribution to ensuring the Fundamental Right to Education for other students. The implementation of RTE would now imply that the Government continues to take this cess, and also expect my child’s school to take in ‘free’ students to the tune of 25% of the population. This does not seem very fair.

c. While the thought behind the RTE Act is noble, the actual implementation would have a psychological impact on the students, both the ‘stronger’ and the ‘weaker’ ones. The divide between the two shall be extremely visible and breed general distrust and resentment. While one can argue that it is the duty of the school to sensitize their present students to the presence of the neighbourhood students among them, in reality it is very difficult to put it into action. This should be examined in much detail, since the very purpose of the Act would be defeated if the children are unhappy at the end of the day.

Having listed our points and concerns, we would like to once again reiterate that we feel implementation of the RTE is not acceptable in the way it is being proposed.