‘Look at education from the bottom’: Why the Right to Education Act still matters

NEW DELHI: Despite being a landmark law, the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, has largely fallen out of public discourse. It was amended in 2019 mainly to dilute one of its more radical provisions – the ban on failing children – but in subsequent years, it has faded from policies.

The new National Education Policy (NEP 2020) barely mentions it; the situation is the same with the National Curriculum Framework. Instead, central and state policies have actively undermined provisions placing a check on public board exams and guaranteeing availability of public school close to every habitation.

Gautam Bandyopadhyay, the newly-elected national convenor of RTE Forum, a platform of national education networks, teachers’ unions, and prominent educationists from all over India, spoke to Careers360 about why there is silence on the RTE Act in policy discussions and why there is still a need for the reforms the RTE Act. Edited excerpts below.

Q. Why is the RTE Act not in policy conversations?

A. Only the economically weaker section (EWS) reservation in private schools ever comes into focus. Apart from that, RTE is never talked about. At a recent meeting we noted that the RTE is not mentioned in the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) or National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2023. RTE came after a long struggle from the bottom. It was a long-held demand from the Indian public that every child should get quality education. We should be able to expect at least access to education from a welfare state. The state has a responsibility to provide that access to its citizens. The RTE Act came in that context.

Monitoring of compliance is required. But till date, only 25% to 26% schools are in compliance with the Act. Why haven’t we reached even 70%? I agree that the system has a lot of contradictions and hence reaching 100% compliance may not be possible but why not more than 60%? There are thousands of teacher vacancies even today.

Then, you have to ask if there’s political will. We need a political will for the fulfilment of the RTE Act as well as the monitoring of its implementation. That monitoring is absent. For that, there is a need for collaboration between centre and state.

Q. Why do you think there is a lack of political will?

A. Education standards are gradually declining in the government schools. Basically, education is being privatised and commercialised and is becoming an agent of the corporate and profit-oriented. It is being handed over from the government to the private.

After the NEP 2020, and even before that, the government seems to be saying education will be better if it is in the hands of the private sector. This is happening in all other sectors as well. And that is a very dangerous system. If this keeps up, the public education and public health systems will collapse. Education is the only thing that can give equity to the poor, Dalit, urban poor, economically marginalised, and other disadvantaged groups.

Q. Schools are being closed or merged even when the RTE Act specifies there should be a primary school within one kilometre of a habitation.

A. The government wants to shrug off responsibility for the services and the public education system is one of the biggest services. They seem to say that better education can be given by the private sector or the low-cost education sector.

Schools are being merged due to low enrolment in government schools. They are saying that by merging schools there will be more teachers and better infrastructure; they claim that it is being done in the name of quality education. However, If you see the geographical diversity of India, this is not possible. There are several tribal areas where the enrollment can be 20-30 but the schools can be far from their home. So now if you say that the community has improved so much and the roads are well connected that there is no such barrier with regard to distance from the student and school – this is a violation of the RTE Act.

RTE says that it is free education and by free education it means everything should be free including transport. Primary education should be in their own locality that is what the pedagogy says. If the school is far from the tribal areas, coastal areas, or other forest areas, say 10 kilometres away, then learning is not happening in the locality.

We need better allocation of resources. The current allocation is 2.7% of the GDP. 6% of the GDP is what every policy talks about. Increase the budget allocation so that you can provide better quality benefits to each and every school.

If this keeps up, the poor will get a poor quality of education. Which means creating inequality from the beginning. Quality education is a constitutional right. We have to change the whole education scenario and look at it from the bottom.

Q. How do you plan to bring RTE back into public discourse ?

A. We have a three-level plan. We are discussing and following the suggestions of educationists – that is one level.

Second, we are studying state-level discourse with teachers, students, school management committees, to discuss the education status of the country and what can be done. We are identifying the problems but we also discuss solutions. We have come up with recommendations over the last 10 years.

Third, we are working with school management committees (SMC) that were mandated by the RTE and which are very localised participatory bodies in schools, to strengthen local governance. In 2024 [for the upcoming general elections], we are trying to work with local representatives to make education a political subject. Without education, development cannot be sustainable. We are advocating for community involvement and community monitoring for primary education.

Q. How are you doing this? Is it through outreach programmes or any other methods?

A. We regularly give policy recommendations. We have given recommendations on NEP, we have given recommendations on NCF. We are also building up a discourse to develop some guidelines for education in an emergency. We are trying to push the government to bring about a policy for education during an emergency. India is a large and diverse country and we have a lot of natural calamities and local disturbances. We should have a set of guidelines on ensuring education during these times.

Like in the last Indian general election of 2019, we are discussing with political representatives the need for increasing the budget for education. We will also engage political parties in discussing RTE compliance, strengthening public education, and on the learning indicators.

Q. You were the president of Chattisgarh RTE Forum. What interventions did the forum make in the state?

A. One was grievance redressal. If toilets were not functional or if drinking water was not available in the school, we collected the information and submitted it to the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR). Once we collected 175 grievances at a time. The SCPCR is responsible for any grievances regarding non-compliance of RTE Act. We got the SCPCR to actively monitor RTE compliance.

Another aspect is that education for all will mean no child labour at all. In Chattisgarh, we had regular discussions with civil society and educationists on this. State alone can’t do this; all the stakeholders, including teachers and parents, are also responsible for bringing about this change. One factor is community responsibility. In Covid, when most of the schools were closed, we helped the community take on the responsibility of teaching their own children.

We also developed 3,000 RTE Mitr who are education volunteers who’s only responsibility is reducing dropouts.

Q. What needs immediate attention in primary education?

A. We need a review of primary education post independence and post 1980s. We also need a review of education before and after the RTE Act so we can understand what the issues are. When this review is conducted it should not be just an implementation review. Whole structure of it should be reviewed including implementation, financial, institutional, everything needs to be looked at in totality.

Secondly, if you see the data, it seems the primary level enrolment is good but at the secondary level, there is a sharp drop. The national data is concerning.

Then, there is the issue of teacher training. The government teacher training institutions are going to close. There are thousands of private teacher training institutes. There needs to be a review of what is being taught. Private schools have increased in the last 20 years.

We have to think on the pedagogy and the way we are teaching the children, whether they are only learning by rote or whether they are developing a scientific temper.

Q. Does the RTE Forum have any plans prior to the 2024 Indian general elections?

A. The forum is trying to bring education as a political subject. The focus is to keep attention on education as a subject and to make sure that political parties bring education in their manifesto. And not just in the manifesto, but to ensure that education is thought of as a core development area so that development is sustainable.