When Kapil “zero-loss” Sibal was minister of MHRD, the parliament passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. Since then this act has received a lot of criticism because it has been ineffective in showing significant improvements. It is unfair to criticize an act or a government for not delivering instant results, since the Indian school system is massive and has a lot of historical baggage that cannot be done away within a few years. That being said, what is being observed on the ground, based on press reports and reports of other observers suggests that the act is having the opposite effect. In other words, more children in need of education and support seem to be excluded from the system than before. So we decided to actually go through the act and find out more about what it prescribes/enforces. The act can be downloaded from here: http://eoc.du.ac.in/RTE%20-%20notified.pdf. Although the politicians who enacted this and the media which is in bed with them project this act as some sort of a “cure all”, we found some gaping holes in it. We are definitely not the first one to do it, and we link some of our resources that do a more thorough job of documenting these things. This is just a summary of things gleaned out of public information. We’ve also been tracking recent news articles about school education but there are many more from the past and many more articles after we started writing this. Some links and resources will be shared at the end. Off with the act.
Section 1
1(2) “This act shall extend to the whole of India except the state of Jammu and Kashmir”
This is due to Art. 370 which we inherited from one of many Nehruvian blunders. So there are no quick fixes to this. Even then, this begs the question as to why such a ‘noble’ act should not be active in J&K. Don’t the children there deserve to be protected? But it must be added however, that the government in J&K implemented an RTE act even though not constitutionally bound to do so.
Section 2
2(d) "child belonging to disadvantaged group" means [a child with disability or] a child belonging to the Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribe, the socially and educationally backward class or such other group having disadvantage owing to social, cultural, economical, geographical, linguistic, gender or such other factor, as may be specified by the appropriate Government, by notification”. Leaving this here for definitional purposes.
Section 4
4. Special provisions for children not admitted to, or who have not completed, elementary education:
Where a child above six years of age has not been admitted in any school or though
admitted, could not complete his or her elementary education, then, he or she shall be admitted in a class appropriate to his or her age:
Provided that where a child is directly admitted in a class appropriate to his or her age, then, he or she shall, in order to be at par with others, have a right to receive
special training, in such manner, and within such time-limits, as may be prescribed:
Provided further that a child so admitted to elementary education shall be entitled
to free education till completion of elementary education even after fourteen years.”
Such provisions will invariably cause problems since children with vastly different education levels might be forced to be in the same class due to their age. A child who has not learnt the numerals properly, sitting in a class where students know multiplication will obviously be a fish out of water. Moreover, this provision says very vaguely that that such children have the right to receive special training. This puts undue strain on teachers who are already in very short supply. It also opens up situations where the children admitted by WTE are harassed by classmates, teachers and schools, who are in turn harassed by authorities for not implementing such absurd provisions. So it would be best to admit children into classes appropriate to their abilities and make them complete the required classes. But this seemingly sane suggestion runs into roadblocks due to Section 13.
Section 12:
“(c) specified in sub-clauses (iii) and (iv) of clause (n) of section 2 shall admit in class I, to the extent of at least twenty-five per cent. of the strength of that class, children belonging to weaker section and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion”.
This is one of the most significant provisions. The government is supposed to reimburse the fees at a later date, but non-payment by the government is rampant. Schools have also protested repeatedly about this issue.
Although it may not sound important, reimbursement is a big deal. If there is a small middle school in Kanchipuram, then they would need the money immediately. Because otherwise they will not be able to pay salaries to teachers. Unlike the government, individuals cannot work in a ‘post-paid’ world. Talented teachers would not remain in small schools in small towns and villages, leading to school closures. Schools have been closing in the thousands after WTE was passed because it puts such tight monetary constraints on schools. The author of this report
http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/education-indifference-or-restraint/article7234760.ece says “Conditions in MP, UP and Bihar are fast deteriorating. In Rajasthan and Maharashtra, a vast number of schools have been closed down.” without even reasoning as to why these closures are happening. Such a post-paid model for running schools is bound to cause big financial strains on schools and teachers. Large governments have not historically been good at paying back things on time. The author (Krishna Kumar) also does not clearly state the causes although he was one of the committee members who had to study the implementation of the act! Quoting from this reference: http://righttoeducation.in/know-your-rte/about
“The Ministry of HRD set up a high-level, 14-member National Advisory Council (NAC) for implementation of the Act. The members included Kiran Karnik, former president of NASSCOM; Krishna Kumar, former director of the NCERT; Mrinal Miri, former vice-chancellor of North-East Hill University; Yogendra Yadav – social scientist. India Sajit Krishnan Kutty, Secretary of The Educators Assisting Children's Hopes (TEACH) India; Annie Namala, an activist and head of Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion; and Aboobacker Ahmad, vice-president of Muslim Education Society, Kerala.”
Section 13:
No capitation fee and screening procedure for admission:
(2) Any school or person, if in contravention of the provisions of sub-section (1)
...
(b) subjects a child to screening procedure, shall be punishable with fine which may extend to twenty-five thousand rupees for the first contravention and fifty thousand rupees for each subsequent contraventions.
This sounds good, right? Wrong. Section 2 says,
2(o) "screening procedure" means the method of selection for admission of a child, in
preference over another, other than a random method;
So WTE seats can be filled only through random (i.i.d. uniform random?) processes. Why should the admissions be random? Why not use a nearest-school criterion? This is such a stupid idea, that a child living in Nanganallur might have to trek up to Egmore and a child living in Egmore might have to trek down to Nanganallur on a daily basis just because of random allocations. Moreover, as mentioned before (section 4), this “no screening” idea makes it impossible to admit children to the appropriate classes based on their abilities. This caused huge confusion in school admissions a few years ago leading to more vagueness in the act.
(This specific issue is a bit old, and we’ve not been able to track it well enough)
Section 16:
“16. Prohibition of holding back and expulsion: No child admitted in a school shall be held back in any class or expelled from school till the completion of elementary education”.
This is a ridiculously populist diktat which will undoubtedly reduce the quality of education since it does not even attempt to enforce any minimum standards. Worse, it says that schools and teachers who are in much closer contact with children also cannot attempt to enforce standards. In the succeeding sections you will see a whole host of idiotic regulations that schools should follow in terms of physical and human infrastructure. But there is not even an attempt to ensure that the children get a quality education in terms of learning outcomes.
Section 25
25. Pupil-Teacher Ratio:(1)[Within three years] from the date of commencement of this Act, the appropriate Government and the local authority shall ensure that the Pupil-Teacher Ratio, as specified in the Schedule, is maintained in each school.
(2) For the purpose of maintaining the Pupil-Teacher Ratio under sub-section (1), no teacher posted in a school shall be made to serve in any other school or office or deployed for any non-educational purpose, other than those specified in section 27.
Another provision that puts undue strain on schools. These requirements are attached as pictures later. When we are talking about universal education, such things should not be of primary concern. It should be whether schools can be helped to help children and whether children are actually learning their subjects through schools.
Section 28
28. Prohibition of private tuition by teacher: No teacher shall engage himself or herself in private tuition or private teaching activity.
Yes, you read it right. Such is the atrociousness of this act. But wait, we are not even half way there. Some pictures of the minimum standards schools have to meet are shown. We doubt if even the new IITs follow such stringent guidelines. These are impractical and penalizes small schools, reduces school access to students in poorer and rural areas and makes things worse by putting a high entry barrier to start schools. One of the reasons for school closures are these regulations that remind us of British colonial administration.
An important quote from this article:
"The RTE act of 2009 continues where the British left off. Dharmpal painstakingly showed, based on British archival records that he copied long hand over decades in London, that India had a flourishing education system that catered to all castes. He documented, from early British records, that there were areas in India with near hundred percent literacy before the British uprooted the tree of indigenous education. To move again towards hundred percent literacy, scrapping the RTE act must be a priority on the government’s legislative agenda.
The strategies that the British used are dutifully carried over in the RTE act. Schools are being de-recognized by the (still) colonial state. This is being based not on the quality of learning but by the quantity of “paraphernalia.” The act lists out a criteria for buildings, fences and a playground in an eerie echo of the British approach to India, completely disconnected from how rural India works. This has led to a closure of existing rural schools, increased the cost of education and, with the recent Supreme Court judgment exempting specified religions identified as “minorities” from its draconian provisions, further communalized the Indian state. An act that closes schools in the cause of universal education can only be considered an act of monumental stupidity."
There are more such sections in the act with gaping holes, but we will not go into them for the interest of time and addressing one critical issue that really turns RTE into WTE. This point was briefly touched upon in the previous quote, but we’ll elaborate on it a little bit.
Why RTE is really WTE:
The act could be passed in the first place and infringe upon the rights of private schools due to the 93rd constitutional amendment. This amendment was done to article 15 of the constitution. This is the original article 15:
“15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth
(1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them
(2) No citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to
(a) access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and palaces of public entertainment; or
(b) the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of State funds or dedicated to the use of the general public
(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children
(4) Nothing in this article or in clause ( 2 ) of Article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes”
To this, Arjun Singh, in his wisdom added:
"(5) Nothing in this article or in sub-clause (g) of clause (1) of article 19 shall prevent the State from making any special provision, by law, for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes in so far as such special provisions relate to their admission to educational institutions including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided by the State, other than the minority educational institutions referred to in clause (1) of article 30.".
Can you spot the blunder of Nehruvian proportions here?
Correct! It has even been highlighted in boldface. So an article which calls for no discrimination on the basis of religion has been explicitly made to override the exact thing it is meant for. And we all let this atrocity pass. This is a colossal failure of “academicians” of the country. The less said about Indian media the better since they are habitual liars, shameless and biased morons who get caught with their pants down each day on social media. One cannot expect them to ask useful questions or contribute to any sane and useful discourse. A post on how UPA gave birth to the poisonous 93rd amendment:
Now think about all the holes and restrictions that we mentioned throughout this article. All of it applies only to Hindu schools! None of it applies to schools run by other communities. Any St. <insert your favourite saint>’s convent is exempt from it. In Chennai, schools like Shishya, where the progeny of celebrities study is also exempt from RTE since that too is a religious minority institution. A significant number of these schools benefited immensely from British era landholdings in prime locations of all major Indian cities and towns. Why can they not contribute to the country’s educational needs?
We have no problems with institutions running for purely religious purposes. For example the state should never meddle with the functioning of Hindu temples (which it shamelessly loots from all the time), churches, mosques, seminaries, madarsaas, veda pAThashAlAs, etc. But there can be no compromise in the case of institutions running for secular purposes. All minority schools freely admit Hindu students and employ Hindu teachers. It is not as if they are doing something specific to promote their faith. If they do, and want an exemption from WTE based on them promoting their faith, then they better be transparent about what they do albeit under the garb of secular education. They better state the real reasons behind why they run schools. Otherwise one does not see a reason why there should be no uniformity in educational institutions imparting secular education. This has widespread ramifications. For example Oxfam (a British NGO) got huge donations to push for WTE:
There are many NGOs that work on pushing WTE which get huge amounts of funds from abroad. Questions arise as to why these foreign NGOs are intervening in India’s education policy. Why are they not questioning such an unfair law that favours minority institutions and puts heavy constraints on Hindu institutions?
There was another report about an NGO brazenly asking the government to not reimburse private schools for WTE seats. And surprise surprise, its general secretary is a certain Prince Gajendra Babu---a member of a minority community. Should he not be lobbying against the sectarianism of the act and be asking for uniformity instead? The report:
Another instance of this is where the Kerala HC gave a decision to enforce quotas for SC/ST in jobs. The judgement was given by Justice A M Shaffique. But this judgement also exempts minorities institutions from having to give quotas.
More recently, there is a proposal by the Delhi Govt. to strengthen penal provisions in Delhi’s education act. The proposals are to punish school authorities with upto 7 years of jail for violating the rules of the act. This again does not apply to minority institutions!
So there is absolutely no uniformity in education laws and Hindu institutions are being unfairly burdened. Again, many minority institutions have historically benefited from British era policies, and Christians are over-represented in education relative to their population. So they are actually in a better financial state to serve students than Hindu institutions, and there is no reason to give minority institutions any exemptions if they are providing secular education. How many of these "top schools" are WTE exempt?
Why are we communalizing the issue?
When the law itself is communal and blatantly favours one religion over another, there is no option but to ‘communalize’ it. The unfairness of the law lies in its non-uniformity and this cannot go unnoticed. A law that allegedly strives for universal education but does not put all resources to efficient use is a very poor law.
The linguistic minority joke:
So it turns out that the act does not apply to linguistic minorities as well. This has been cleverly used by some schools such as NPS group of schools in Bangalore:
These schools have got a stay on WTE by claiming to be Malayali linguistic minority schools in Bangalore. This is such a joke since everyone knows that these are very posh schools situated in prime localities of the city. Even alumni of these schools who studied there from LKG to 12th standard were not aware that it was a Malayali minority school. Again similar questions arise. How many Malayali students really go to NPS? Is it > 25% ? Even if there is 8% Malayali student population, why can’t they give 17% of their seats to WTE? Like the case of religious minorities, what exactly is NPS doing to promote Malayalam? A cursory glance of NPS Rajaji Nagar’s website seems to indicate that they do not even offer Malayalam as a subject, let alone go out of their way to promote it!
These minority exemptions is nothing short of fraud on the public, but constitutionally sanctioned fraud. Not one media organization has reported the problems with minority exemptions and other problems prominently. Neither have they attempted to create awareness and healthy discourse about these evils. They themselves might not have read the act or the 93rd amendment to be able to contribute anything meaningful. Not one so called NGO/civil society group that we are aware of has registered these problems. Instead they are all hell bent on WTE being strictly enforced in its current, poisonous form.
So far we have seen only a few reports in the media that highlight the perils of minorityism, in publications that one may not classify as MSM.
From the report:
“What’s more, the judge allowed several exemptions for minority institutions. While in non-minority schools salaries of teachers are controlled by the government, it is not so for minority institutions. Teacher-student ratio is strictly regulated in non-minority institutions, but not for minority schools. Minority institutions, it is stated, have their own distinct cultural and social identity, and are thus allowed to spend more on Christmas gifts, but no such freedom is given to non-minority schools.
The judgment even goes into how much must be charged for each kilometre of school transport provided to the child, while minority schools are exempt from such interventions, and their audited statements are to be accepted by the fee committee without questions. Minority schools are even allowed to charge more than non-minority schools as ‘surplus’ fees for development. The communalisation of the fee structure has further angered many private school owners.”
Maybe this reporter now knows about the constitutional amendment 93. Other articles that talk about the biased law:
Enter AAPTards with their Delhi sized lab:
We alluded to this problem earlier. These idiots have been going after private schools as if schools are criminals. Again, instead of helping schools to help needy children, such confrontational attitudes could cause a lot of damage to school education. In their usual style, they have proposed to make certain violations criminal offences with upto 7 year jail terms!
Schools have also voiced their protest against such laws:
Some other aggressive AAP laws:
An education ad with the education-minister-cum-deputy CM's signature has a heading that roughly translates, "From now on there will be rampant closures of private schools in Delhi". This is part of their 500+Cr ad budget? Maybe.
What is the solution?
We have no doubt that WTE is going to cause huge long term problems that can in turn cause a lot of unrest. There may be 2 antidotes to WTE’s problems:
- Bring in uniformity and draft a truly secular law. Remove minority exemptions and expand access. But this is not going to remove the other loopholes and they need careful reframing.
- The better route: Abolish WTE and introduce vouchers to needy students. So if a student has a voucher, he/she can go to the closest school irrespective of this minority/majority nonsense and submit it to the school authorities. The school can immediately go to a bank and deposit it into their account or encash it. Direct cash transfers to needy children may not work since the money maybe taken by parents who may not know better. Since vouchers can be encashed only by schools that show proof of the child’s enrollment, this may be a better solution. The details may be a bit more complicated but definitely not as complicated as WTE.
What is being done and what we can do:
- The present MHRD minister is aware of these problems and she says that a national education policy is being designed to be revealed in 2016. But remember that she depends on the same babus who sucked up to the rakshasa who served as the previous MHRD minister, and helped him draft WTE. Also remember that the same babus helped the rakshasa before him to draft the constitutional amendment 93. Thirdly, we have our own doubts whether the MHRD is competent enough to pass well thought out reforms.
- Much of what is in this post has been filtered from this person’s blog https://realitycheck.wordpress.com/ and following him on Twitter too: https://twitter.com/realitycheckind. It might help for other interested folks to do both these things and stay informed.
- Other articles on school closures and the perils of the act have appeared in other publications: http://swarajyamag.com/economy/save-our-schools-from-the-rte-monster/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXKcqMwKRYM http://swarajyamag.com/economy/a-loud-no-to-rte/
- If you live close to your old school, try to speak to your teachers and find out if they face any problems. Try to raise your voice in favour of your school if you think they are facing trouble and if they have a case. Try to make them aware of these problems since they also might be oblivious like we were till about a year ago. It is also clear that there are foreign funded NGOs pushing for total implementation of this sectarian piece of legislation which makes the schools all the more vulnerable.
- Whatever MHRD is going to do will cause the Indian media to howl. This is because the minister has taken on the congi first family head on (by contesting against pappu in LS elections), and the media...well..you get the thread. So when any changes to WTE or Article 15 are being proposed, do try to get independent opinions. If you have the time, read the primary sources since … internet. It is painful but it would be worth it to be well informed since we foresee a huge uproar if and when changes are made to WTE. This post predicts some changes to the policy and a lot of mindless howling against the changes. MHRD might chicken out and the change proposals may not happen at all. But if they do, the howling will no doubt happen. So its better to “vaccinate” oneself against the noise.
- Stay informed and spread the word.
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