RIGHT TO EDUCATION BILL

HISTORY

At the time of independence, the creators of the Constitution of India wanted every child up to the age of 14 to enjoy the right to and have enrolment in education by the 1960’s. Yet this intent was passed as Article 45 under Directive Principles of State Policy, which “are not enforceable by the courts”. The original Article 45 of the Constitution “seeks to provide free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14”. Although the Constituent Assembly of India said we would be “cheating the nation” by not providing education to all, 60 years down the road we yet are to accomplish this fundamental goal.

As Article 45 did not accomplish providing education to all children up to the age of 14, the year 1968 saw education again on the agenda with the formulation of the National Policy on Education of 1968 that laid out guidelines for ‘status, emoluments, and education of teachers’ and ‘development of languages’ and also ‘equalisation of educational opportunity’ etc.

Then in the mid eighties, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi set up a committee to review elementary education. This committee drafted the “Challenge of Education: A Policy Perspective” which was the forerunner to the “National Policy on Education 1986 (NPE)”. If this policy had been enacted in 1986, “every child of 11 years in 1990 and of 14 years in 1995 would be in school”. The NPE had a detailed ‘programme of action’ for each clause in order to accomplish the goal of providing elementary education to every child.

In the early 1990’s then Prime Minister VP Singh set up a new committee under the chairmanship of Acharya Ram Murthy, which reviewed the 1986 NPE. This committee made cosmetic changes to the 1986 NPE but did “extend the deadline of providing education to every child by the turn of the century.” This was not accomplished.

Next, BJP introduced the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which said all children would complete eight years of schooling by 2010, but for that goal to be accomplished all children would have had to be enrolled by 2003. In 2002, BJP drafted the Right to Education Bill, 2002, which did not get passed in Parliament.

Then during UPA tenure , the bill is reviewed by a the committe set up for it,it provided a modified version of the bill , which was presented in rajya sabha in 2008, but was not able to be get passed.

THE OBSTACLES

Since it was put in directive principles of constitution , which are not enforceable by court , and these principles are generally taken for granted by both central and state goverment , thinking it as responsibility of other, the right to education was not meet . The NPE(rajiv gandhi) was not sucessful as there was a change of goverment.

For later , the factors, were the insistence of some academics that the Bill is not ready to be passed because the quality of education being assured is not “perfect to the T”. A concern of the government has been regarding the “justice-ability” of the Bill. Along the way there have been changes in the Constitution. While the original Article 45 mandated compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14, the 86th amendment to the Constitution mandated compulsory education to children between the ages of 6-14.(adding of article 21a) To protect the 0-6 age group, the early childhood care and education (ECCE) was established but only as a directive for states wherein they would “endeavour to provide” pre-schooling to the 0-3 and the 3-6 age group.(article 45th changed)

CURRENT SCENARIO

Key provisions of the Bill include: * 25% reservation in private schools for disadvantaged children from the neighbourhood, at the entry level. The government will reimburse expenditure incurred by schools. * No donation or capitation fee on admission. * No interviewing the child or parents as part of the screening process. The Bill also prohibits physical punishment, expulsion or detention of a child, and deployment of teachers for non-educational purposes other than census or election duty and disaster relief. Running a school without recognition will attract penal action.

It will be known as ‘The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009,’ The Rajya Sabha passed the Bill on July 20 2009.Once the President gave assent to the Bill, getting education would be a fundamental right of the child.