The Right to Education (RTE) Act of 2009 carries the seeds of undermining the very right it proposes to guarantee. If the letter of this law had been enforced, all unrecognised schools, which on average provide better education than the nearest recognised government school, would have been shut down as of April 1, 2013, turning the "right" of tens of millions of children into a curse. Likewise, if the input norms in the RTE Act had been fully enforced, a large number of even government schools would have lost recognition and shut down on April 1, 2013, forcing yet more children on to the street. The ban on mandatory board examinations by the RTE Act all the way up to eighth grade and consequent automatic promotions have eliminated the last available tool of measuring teacher performance, turning them yet more complacent. The result has been a rapid collapse of already low levels of student achievements. NGO Pratham reports that the proportion of third graders in rural government schools who can identify numbers from 1 to 100 has dropped from 70% in 2010 to 54% in 2012. -Arvind Panagariya, professor of Indian political economy at Columbia University.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 16:44:24 +0000
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