Right to Education

Wherein his predecessors were more concerned with higher education reforms concentrating on the IIM’s, Kapil Sibal have taken a much welcome shift concentrating on Education at the grassroots level. The Right to Education is a landmark act in the history of India addressing one of the plaguing issues of the Indian Society.

As mentioned by Mr. Sibal, “The bill provides a framework for quality education and access to it” providing the right direction for primary education in India. The keyword to note is Quality and ensuring access to Quality Education across the cross section of society. However this will depend on the multiple stakeholders and their interests, right from parents, teachers, educational institutions and the society as a whole.

The commendable part of the bill is the delineation of Literacy from Education, whereas literacy is defined as the ability of a person above the age of 7 to read and write, education is much more than literacy enabling comprehension. So it is time to do a reality check as to what are the gaps that needs to be filled in order to achieve the ambition of 100% access to primary education.

In 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh mentioned that only 47 out of 100 children enrolled in class I were able to reach class VIII. This puts the dropout ratio at 52.79%.
19% of the total primary schools in India are single teacher schools. 42 million students in the age group of 6-14 do not attend school due to various reasons like accessibility, poverty, inadequate quality of education etc. 16.64 % of the country’s villages do not have any primary schooling facilities. Teacher absenteeism ranges from 15% in Maharashtra to as high as 42% in Jharkand. The teacher-student ratio in India is 1:42, whereas in Bihar alone it is 1:83. (Sourcehttp://www.unicef.org/india/education_1551.htm)

The reality seems bad enough as the data points out the jarring gap in infrastructure and the ambitious goal of achieving quality education for all children. So the first step will be to set appropriate incentives for each of the above-mentioned stakeholders. (The mid-day meal scheme was one such incentive prompting the child to attend school).

Similarly in order to get Quality education, Quality Teachers are a necessity which unfortunately India lacks due to the miniscule pay scale set for the teaching community. A performance based incentive for the teaching community which is at par with any other industry should be set. The performance of a teacher can be measured as the pass percentage of his/her students based on which incentives can be set.

The bill targets compulsory education till 14 years of age or till Class VIII only. Whereas the syllabus is set in such a way that real education starts only after the age of 14 for a child. While primary education will concentrate on ensuring literacy, Education will begin only after the age of 14. But with the kind of startling statistics with respect to education in India achieving 100% literacy in the first place will prove to be a herculean task for the policymakers.

The bill is only a signboard which points to destination miles away and not the destination itself.