India has the largest student population in the world with over 13.5cr pupils in primary education followed by China at over 12.1cr pupils at this level. With a literacy rate of 61% India ranks a disappointing 172nd on this front. Educating such a large population is not only an expensive task but also a very difficult one. Of the nearly 200 million children in the 6 to 14 age group, more than half do not complete eight years of elementary education, as never enrolled or dropouts. Of those who do complete eight years of schooling, the achievement levels of a large percentage, in language and mathematics, is unacceptably low.
Problems to be sought out:
Firstly, there is the problem of access. School education is simply unavailable to the vast number of children in the country. During the last few decades, there has been some progress in improving enrolment. The gross enrolment ratio (GER) from Classes I to VIII was 94.9 per cent and from Classes I to XII, 77 per cent. Even these enrolment figures are generally rigged and exaggerated for various administrative and political purposes. Moreover, the attendance has generally been found to be at least 25 per cent below enrolment and the drop-out rate from Classes I to X was 61.6 per cent; and in a State like Bihar it was above 75 per cent. Among those who drop out, the percentage of children belonging to the
Scheduled Castes in the country as a whole was 70.6 and of the Scheduled Tribes, 78.5. In Bihar, the figure was close to 90 per cent for both the categories. The net result is that a sizeable percentage, as much as 30 per cent, of children in the school-going age in India are out of school; the percentage is as high as 50 in Bihar (1.5 crores out of three crore children in the school going age-group).
Only 53 per cent of all habitations have a primary school On an average, an upper primary school is 3 km away in 22 percent of habitations More than 50 percent of the girls in the country do not enrol in schools When working outside the family, children put in an average of 21 hours of labour per week, at the cost of education 60 million children are thought to be child labourers. More than 35 million children in the 6-14 age group are out of school Only 45.8 percent girls complete education in rural areas as compared to 66.3 percent boys. In urban areas, 66.3 percent girls complete education as opposed to 80.3 per cent boys.
Necessity of compulsory education:
In essence, a citizen is only free when he can make a meaningful challenge to his fellow citizens or Government’s attempt to curtail his natural freedom. For this to happen, he needs a certain degree of education. Without it, a citizen may never come to know of his other rights; nor would he have the resources to adequately enforce them.
The Supreme Court has explained why education should be compulsory. A free educated citizen could meaningfully exercise his political rights, discharge social responsibilities satisfactorily and develop a spirit of tolerance and reform. Therefore, education is compulsory. Primary education to the children, in particular, to the poor, weaker sections, Dalits and Tribes and minorities is mandatory. The basic education and employment-oriented vocational education should be imparted so as to retrieve them from poverty and, thus, develop basic abilities to live a meaningful life, the principal means and primary duty of the State for stability for the democracy, social integration and to eliminate social tensions.
Article 21 of Indian Constitution
Education is one of the basic elements, for the success of democratic system of any Government. An educated citizen may choose better representatives, to form the Government. Education provides human dignity to a person, to develop himself as well as contribute towards the development of his country. The framers of our constitution realising the importance of education, impose a duty on the State under Article 45, as one of the Directive Principles of State Policy, to provide free education to all children until they complete the age of 14 years, within 10 years from the commencement of the Constitution. The object was to abolish illiteracy from the country. It was expected that the elected Governments of the country would honestly implement this directive. But, this right was not recognised by many of the States. The Hon’ble Supreme Court held that right to free education falls in the ambit of “right to life” enshrined by Article 21 of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, that goal of the Constitution imposed by Article 45, could not be achieved within 10 years but succeeded after five decades, in the form of Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002. By this Amendment, Article 21A was inserted in Part III, providing free and compulsory education to the children between the age of 6 to 14 years. Even after the lapse of around six decades of independence, illiteracy has a high ratio in the country.
With intense public pressure, government relented to introduce Right to Education Bill in December 2002 and introduced 86th Amendment Act (2002) via Article 21A (Part III) “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of 6 to 14 years in such manner as the state may, by law, determine”. Thereby the fundamental right given in Article 21 was diluted by excluding children aged 0-6 years from the purview of the Bill, thereby depriving around 170 million children below six years of their right to education. The original Right to Education Bill, 2002 was rigorously debated and several modifications were ultimately introduced in the parliament in 2009. The RTE Act provides the legislative framework for Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE). The bill was adopted after 8 years of intense and sustained pressure by civil society organizations.
The citizen of the this country have a fundamental right to education and it flows from Article 21. This right is, however, not an absolute right. Its content and parameters have to be determined in the light of Articles 45 and 41. In other words, every child/citizen of this country has a right to free education until he completes the age of 14 years. Thereafter his right to education is subject to the limits of economic capacity and development of the State.
Right to education is not stated expressly as a Fundamental Right in Part III of the Constitution of India, However, having regard to the fundamental significance of education to the life of an individual and the nation, right to education is implicit in and flows from the right to life guaranteed by Article 21. That the right to education has been treated as one of transcendental importance in the life of an individual is recognised all over the world. Without education being provided to the citizens of this country, the objectives set forth in the preamble to the Constitution cannot be achieved. The Constitution would fail.
Right to free education is fundamental right from six to fourteen years of age:
Of late, in the year 2002 after 52 years of the enforcement of the Constitution, the Parliament has made the fundamental right to education, free and compulsory for the children of the age 6 to 14 years by Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002. This Amendment has inserted Article 21A and clause (k) in Article 51A with the substitution of Article 45 of the Constitution.
The RTE Act requires surveys that will monitor all neighbourhoods, identify children requiring education, and set up facilities for providing it. The World Bank education specialist for India, Sam Carlson, has observed: “The RTE Act is the first legislation in the world that puts the responsibility of ensuring enrolment, attendance and completion on the Government. It is the parents’ responsibility to send the children to schools in the US and other countries.”
The Right to Education of persons with disabilities until 18 years of age is laid down under a separate legislation – the Persons with Disabilities Act. A number of other provisions regarding improvement of school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio and faculty are made in the Act.
The Central and the State Governments shall have concurrent responsibility for providing funds for carrying out the provisions of this Act. This Act is an essential step towards improving each child’s accessibility to secondary and higher education. The Act also contains specific provisions for disadvantaged groups, such as child labourers, migrant children, children with special needs, or those who have a disadvantage owing to social, cultural, economical, geographical, linguistic, gender or any such factor. With the implementation of this Act, it is also expected that issues of school drop out, out-of-school children, quality of education and availability of trained teachers would be addressed in the short to medium term plans.
The enforcement of the Right to Education Act (External website that opens in a new window) brings the country closer to achieving the objectives and mission of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Education for All (EFA) and hence is a historic step taken by the Government of India.
The Right to education act lays down the norms and standards related to:
Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs), Buildings and infrastructure, School-working days, teacher-working hours.
It had a clause for “No Detention Policy” which has been removed under The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Act, 2019.
It also provides for prohibition of deployment of teachers for noneducational work, other than decennial census, elections to local authority, state legislatures and parliament, and disaster relief.
It provides for the appointment of teachers with the requisite entry and academic qualifications.
It prohibits Physical punishment and mental harassment, Screening procedures for admission of children, Capitation fee, Private tuition by teacher Running of schools without recognition.
It focuses on making the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety through a system of child friendly and child centred learning.
Benefits of Right to Education Act, 2009
RTE has been a part of the directive principles of the State Policy under Article 45 of the Constitution, which is part of Chapter 4 of the Constitution. And rights in Chapter 4 are not enforceable. For the first time in the history of India we have made this right enforceable by putting it in Chapter 3 of the Constitution as Article 21. This entitles children to have the right to education enforced as a fundamental right.
Right to compulsory education:
The word ‘compulsion’ is not to be related to the student or the parents. Parents cannot be penalized for being too poor to send their children to school. The word, ‘compulsion’ has to be understood in relation to the State and the obligation of the State to provide for free education.
The Supreme Court has held that so many children drop out of, or are, absent from, school before they turn fourteen, “free education” alone cannot solve the problem. The current patchwork of laws on compulsory education is insufficient. Monetary fines do not go far enough to ensure that Article 21A is upheld. The Statement of Objects and Reasons for Article 21A states that the Constitution of India in a Directive Principle contained in Article 45, has made a provision for free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of fourteen years within ten years of promulgation of the Constitution. We could not achieve this goal even after 50 years of adoption of this provision. The task of providing education to all children in this age group gained momentum after the National Policy of Education (NPE) was announced in 1986. The Government of India, in partnership with the State Governments, has made strenuous efforts to fulfil this mandate and though significant improvements were seen in various education indicators, the ultimate goal of providing universal and quality education still remains unfulfilled. In order to fulfil this goal, it is felt that an explicit provision.
Every generation looks up to the next generation with the hope that they shall build up a nation better than the present. Therefore education which empowers the future generation should always be the main concern for any nation. It is now an undisputed fact that right to education can be realized on a national level only through compulsory education, or better say, through free compulsory primary education. However due to the widespread poverty and various prejudices in the society, the efforts to develop an educational system in India with full access, equality and quality of education has not been achieved. The inability to check the dropout rates among the marginalized sections of the population is another cause of worry.
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