A

Project Report On

“RIGHT TO EDUCATION”

Submitted By:
Name – Kumar Ankit
Semester – 1st
Roll Number – BALLB/2012/57
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all,I would like to thank our very own Nirmala Madam for allowing
me to choose a topic on my area of interest. This helped me in choosing a
topic on my own and working on such a topic chosen by myself was worth it.
This has helped me in gaining long insight into this topic which will help me
further in my life.

I would also like to thank my parents for believing in me,supporting me in

each and every aspect I sought it.

I would also like to thank my friends for being on my side throughout the
whole journey of this project and giving me valuable ideas.

Last but never the least,without whom my work is incomplete,The Almighty

who has been a constant support till the end and throughout my journey of
this project saga
 CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION
 DEFINING THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION
 HISTORY OF RTE IN INDIA
 Assessment of fulfilment
 THE 4 – A SCHEME
 SUGGESTION FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF RTE
ACT
 PROBLEMS WITH RIGHT TIO EDUCATION ACT
 CONCLUSION
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
 INTRODUCTION

The Right to Education Act (RTE), enacted in 2009, has ushered in hope
for school education in the country. It is the culmination of efforts made
by educationists, members of civil society and judiciary for the last many
years. Free and compulsory education for all children had been debated
even in pre-Independence years. It made its way into the Constitution as
a Directive Principle of State Policy under the former Article 45, whereby
states were required to ensure provision of free and compulsory
education (FCE) to all children till the age of 14 years within a period of
10 years of the formulation of the Constitution. There is enough
evidence to suggest that this goal has not been achieved even several
decades after India became independent. With the RTE coming into
force, there is an expectation that this will finally be translated into
provision of quality school education for all children. It is the primary
responsibility of the Government to ensure implementation of the Act.
Being part of the concurrent list, the Central and state governments are
both responsible for ensuring effective implementation of the Act. There
has been significant improvement in terms of the number of primary
schools, largely due to additional resources made available through the
SarvShikshaAbhiyaan to bridge existing gaps. The scheme is now being
extended to the secondary school level as well. In addition to the
Government’s initiative, the private sector has also played a role in
improving the state of education in the country and continues to do so.
This study is an attempt to explore the role the private sector can play in
implementation of the RTE.

There are varied opinions on some sections of the Act from different
perspectives. The study includes some views and counters those on
some aspects of the Act. For instance, inclusion of a schedule to set up
norms and standards has by and large been welcomed, although there
is a strong opinion that it does not address quality issues adequately. On
the contrary, some groups feel that it is not friendly toward small
organizations that are making an attempt to reach out to disadvantaged
groups, but are not adequately resourced to meet the norms and
standards laid down in the Act. We hope this will make our readers
understand some of the different perspectives.

The role of the private sector was recognized even in the 1960s when
the KothariCommission was assigned the task of preparing a road map
for school education in the country. Over the years, there has been
uneasiness in accepting the role of the private sector. The genesis of
this perhaps lies in the ever increasing inequality in the education
system, which has shaped the two faces of the country “India” and
“Bharat” — one for the elite and the other for the have-nots. This
perception is also impacted by civil society’s resistance to globalization.
According to the law of the land, education cannot be a means to
making profit. This raises the question, then how will programs be
sustained. There is a demand for allowing “reasonable returns”on the
investment the private sector makes toward education so that its efforts
are sustained. On the flip side, if these reasonable returns are allowed,
where will it stop? Will there be enough safeguards to ensure that
children from economically disadvantaged sections are not denied
education because they cannot afford to take admission in schools? Is
25% reservation in private schools the only answer to address issues
related to social inequality? We believe that while discussing the role of
the private sector, it is important to define what the sector actually is. We
have defined the private sector as nonstateplayers, including NGOs,
INGOs, civil society groups, corporate foundations and resource
agencies. We believe it is possible for like- minded stakeholders to
come together and supplement each others’ efforts. Each stakeholder
brings a different set of skills, which can collectively help in effective
implementation of the RTE. If child rights are central to all planning
efforts, there is a lot that different stakeholders can do collectively to
support the Government in achieving its national agenda. It is also our
belief that universalization of quality education cannot be achieved
without strengthening the public education system. Private and public
schools can co-exist, but can greater efforts be made to improve the
public education system? We hope this study provides some ideas on
how this can be achieved. We owe it to the next generation to make it
possible for them to reap the benefits of the demographic advantage we
have today.
Defining the right to education

The right to education has been universally recognised since the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (though referred to by the ILO as early as
the 1920s) and has since been enshrined in various international conventions,
national constitutions and development plans. However, while the vast majority
of countries have signed up to, and ratified, international conventions (such as
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) far fewer have integrated these
rights into their national constitutions or provided the legislative and
administrative frameworks to ensure that these rights are realised in practice. In
some cases the right exists along with the assumption that the user should pay
for this right, undermining the very concept of a right. In others, the right exists
in theory but there is no capacity to implement this right in practice. Inevitably,
a lack of government support for the right to education hits the poorest hardest.
Today, the right to education is still denied to millions around the world.

As well as being a right in itself, the right to education is also an enabling right.
Education „creates the “voice” through which rights can be claimed and
protected‟, and without education people lack the capacity to „achieve valuable
functionings as part of the living‟. If people have access to education they can
develop the skills, capacity and confidence to secure other rights. Education
gives people the ability to access information detailing the range of rights that
they hold, and government‟s obligations. It supports people to develop the
communication skills to demand these rights, the confidence to speak in a
variety of forums, and the ability to negotiate with a wide range of government
officials and power holders.

History of RTE in India

15 December 2008, seventy one years since Mahatma Gandhi gave the call for
universaleducation in 1937; sixty one years since independence; fifty eight
years since theConstitution, instead of making education a fundamental right
made it part of the Directive Principles; fifteen years since the Supreme Court in
1993 ruled on the right to education; six years after the 86th constitutional
amendment was passed by the Parliament in 2002 by inserting Article 21A
making education a fundamental right for children in the restricted age group of
6 to 14 years; and four years after the draft bill was prepared by the CABE
committee, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill was introduced in
the RajyaSabha on 15 December 2008. Though the delay on part of the state is
deplorable, the introduction is undeniably momentous .

The Supreme Court, in 1993 in the Unnikrishnan case, ruled that the right to
education would be restricted by the economic capacity of the state only beyond
age 14, the government ignored it. When the current draft was being prepared
by the CABE in 2005, NUEPA made cost calculations in different scenarios,
using the KendriyaVidyalaya salary scales and state government scales for
teachers and all the provisions of the mandatory schedule. The amounts in each
case fell well within the six per cent of the GDP norm promised by the
Common Minimum Programme of the present UPA government .

Yet, despite a much better economic situation than during Gandhiji‟s time in
1937, the response of the government was no different! The high level group set
up by the prime minister to examine the economic and legal implications of the
bill recommended that the states bring in their respective legislations for reasons
not disclosed. Essentially it was felt that it was much too expensive for the
Centre to fund the scheme as per the NUEPA calculations, and further that the
Centre could be burdened with a plethora of court cases; so let the states with
financial assistance from the centre assume both these responsibilities. The
phrase used was that „states were flush with funds‟, and in any case they are
prone to misuse central funding for freebies like cheap rice and colour TVs for
buying votes. Once the states rejected the recommendations and many of the
critics, in August 2007, questioned the prime minister on the quantum of funds
required (on the basis of reduced projections of child population figures by the
Registrar of Census in its 2006 corrections to the Census 2001figures), and
perhaps because of the „political‟ value of such a legislation on the threshold of
parliamentary elections, the central legislation was resurrected.

Finally in last two months RTE got the momentum after KabilSibbal coming
aboard as the Human Resource Cabinet minister in the new Manmohan Singh
Government and it was quickly tabled and passed first in RajyaSabha and then
in Lok Sabha5 in August, 2009. So as of today Indians have one more
fundamental right i.e Right to Education.
Assessment of fulfilment

The fulfilment of the right to education can be assessed using the 4 As

framework, which asserts that for education to be a meaningful right it must be
available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. The 4 As framework was
developed by the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education,
Katarina Tomasevski, but is not necessarily the standard used in every
international human rights instrument and hence not a generic guide to how the
right to education is treated under national law.

The 4 As framework proposes that governments, as the prime duty-bearer, has

to respect, protect and fulfil the right to education by making education
available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. The framework also places
duties on other stakeholders in the education process: the child, which as the
privileged subject of the right to education has the duty to comply with
compulsory education requirements, the parents as the „first educators‟, and
professional educators, namely teachers.

The 4 As have been further elaborated as follows:

The 4-A scheme

The 4-A relate to availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability. Each
one of thesecharacteristics is extracted from the right to education and refers to
obligations which should be undertaken by the government in order to fulfill its
commitments. It translates the juridical notions into comprehensive fragments
of the substance of the right to education. Note, however, that all the criteria are
interrelated for there is no divisibility of the right and only a holistic view can
generate the concept of the right to education.

Availability is the first component of the right to education in Tomasevski's

(1999) framework. It relates to the possibility of education being obtained by all
without any discrimination. It refers to existence of educational institutions
within reasonable distance for pupils' attendance it refers to security within the
educational system, as well as to making entry into the educational system
available to all regardless of age or social condition. As far as infrastructure for
schooling is concerned, it requires active employment of resources from the
nation-states that can be a constraint to the realization of rights but, as
Tomasevskihighlights, others actors, like private investors, can assist on the
realization of this aspect of the right to education. Another topic related to
availability is the insurance of free and compulsory education to all. The
freedom, in economic terms, includes direct costs but also indirect and
opportunity costs and other "invisible costs", as Ribeiro defines it. It has been
evident that in many countries it is those indirect costs which disable people to
effectively enjoy education. These indirect costs make education unavailable to
many. The assurance of free education, however, tends to create a link between
poverty and lack of education. Although in many cases, such as in the northeast
of Brazil, better education can be translated into wealth, the problems with
realizing the right to education are not linked to poverty. Tomasevski argues
that the matters lie on policy rather than poverty. In terms of ideological
freedom, the availability of the right to education aims to assure that no
indoctrination occurs in the educational system and that tolerability of views is
practice. No discrimination for the entry into the schooling system due to
cultural characteristics. However, even if all those aspects of the right to
education are assured in practice, the right to education would not be complete.
It requires other components to make it holistic to all. Therefore, white
availability of education refers to the existence of the schooling system,
accessibility refers to the possibility of entering it and remaining in it.

Accessibility means governments must strive for the practical elimination of

gender and racial discrimination and ensure the equal enjoyment of all human
rights, and must not besatisfied with merely formally prohibiting discrimination.
In addition, accessibility relates tothe primary, secondary and tertiary levels of
education in different ways; governments are only obliged to provide access to
free and compulsory education for all children in the compulsory age range. The
right to education should be realized progressively, ensuring allencompassing,
free and compulsory education is available as soon as possible, and facilitating
access to post-compulsory education as circumstances permit. Accessibility also
relates to gender and racial discrimination, complementing the cultural and
ethnic discrimination variable described in availability. Measures for preventing
such discrimination should be in place to insure that all have access to the
educational system. Note, also that "discrimination is a moving target: in
addition to old forms of prejudice needing greater scrutiny, such as non-citizens
being denied or offered low-grade
education, new issues continue to arises.

The degree to which accessibility of education should be made available,

however, changes as the schooling cycle progresses. Special importance is
given to primary education in all of the international legislation concerning the
right to education. All treaties establish that primary education shall be
compulsory and available free to all. Ribeiro considers that such a
compulsoriness and freeness compose the minimum standards of the obligation
towards the right to education which should be observed "immediately, with no
delay".

As far as secondary education is concerned, the progressive realization of the

substance of the right is what the international treaties require. Availability and
accessibility are the key words for this level of education, which should take the
form of formal, technical and vocational education, for, as Ribeiro continues to
say "there is no compulsory requirement nor there is a guarantee that it will be
made available and free to all". This is a hindrance in the international system
for education but it reflects a compromise which would suit states capacity in
the supply of education.

Higher education is, yet, less assured than secondary for it should be made
accessible on the basis of state capacity and with progressive introduction of
free education. As seen, the right to education varies according to the level of
education being examined however availability is not automatically translated
into the realization of the right to education. Therefore, we follow on the
analysis of the next criteria for understanding and assessing the right to
education.

Acceptability requires minimum guarantees regarding the quality of education,

for example in terms of health and safety or professional requirements for
teachers, but it is much wider in scope than this. These guarantees have to be
set, monitored and enforced by the governmentthroughout the education system,
whether the institutions are public or private. Acceptabilityhas been
considerably broadened through the development of international human rights
law: indigenous and minority rights have prioritized the language of instruction,
while the prohibition of corporal punishment has transformed methods of
instruction and school discipline. The emerging perception of children as
subjects with the right to education and with rights in education has further
extended the boundaries of acceptability to include the contents of educational
curricula and textbooks, which are increasingly considered from the perspective
of human rights.

Acceptability is one of the very important themes that guide discussions

regarding the right to education for the people that might have education
available and accessible but with poor quality which does not lead to the desired
outcomes. It involves curricula setting and respect for parents' views on the
education of their children, the language of education and the culture of
education, for example. As Tomasevski says, there are very few guidelines
given by international treaties and national legislations on this matter. In theory,
however, international organizations such as UNESCO should be available to
assist states in the formulation of technical expertise to develop a coherent
curriculum which would enable students to learn skills to match the goals of
education. It would also be part of the same groups of institutions to assist
countries on the formulation of indicators to measure the quality of the
educational system.

Another aspect of acceptable education lies in the bridge between the

educational system and the labour market. "Achieving an acceptable level of
quality education also demands that attention be paid to the opportunities
school-leavers can expect to enjoy when finishing education and entering the
job market. One important aspect of this involves close participation between
education and the labour sectors, and this is another example of how education
must develop a balanced, mutual relationship with all other areas of society to
maximize its effectiveness" .
Making education acceptable also means attending to other actors, such as
teachers and parents for instance, who become plaintiffs of better educational
policies as well as demand for collective rights. The International Labour
Organization (ILO) conventions have been instrumental in assuring this aspect
of the right to education as they handle issues such as the right of teacher to
organize for better working conditions, training and salaries. Concerns
regarding discrimination also figure within ILO rulings.

Adaptability requires that schools respond to the needs of each individual

child, in keepingwith the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This reverses
the traditional approach in which schools expected the children to adapt to
whatever form of education the school provided. As human rights do not exist
in isolation, adaptability involves safeguarding all human rights within
education as well as enhancing human rights through education. This
necessitates cross-sectoral analysis of the impact of education on the
wholerange of human rights, to monitor, for example, graduate employment by
ensuring integrated planning between the relevant sectors .

However, none of the above aspects of the right to education would be complete
without the adaptability of education to the best interest of each student. The
ideal that education only regards children permeates the literature regarding this
aspect of the right to education but adaptability should concern every student,
regardless of age, sex, ethnic origin or whichever other circumstance. The
characteristic of adaptability directly deals with methods of teaching and with
“making education responsive to the immediate reality facing children in their
own community" . Participation becomes a valuable resource in this context as
it enables the children to voice their experiences and demand for responsiveness
of the schooling institutions towards their individual education process.
Williams (2005) narrates the importance of the participation of children in the
shaping of their scholar needs and of other rights related to their sphere of
activity; she highlights how the opening of innovative ways for participation
enhanced their right to live in equity, dignity and in freedom. Adaptability
means to do that, to adjust education to peoples changing realities.

Suggestions for implementation of the

RTE Act
Suggestions given by respondents maybe categorized under four broad areas:

Awareness

Awareness among communities about the Act is one of the key aspects for it
successful implementation. At present, awareness among people about the Act
is low. Unless people understand its contours, there will be limited initiative and
ownership on their part. Civil society can play a much larger role in creating
this awareness.
.
Capacity development

Capacity development is required at various levels to operationalize the Act. At

the community level, SMCs and Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) need to be
trained about their roles and responsibilities; strengthening of systems and
human resource development is also needed to make efficient use of available
resources, and most importantly, teachers should be trained to impart child-
centered education.

Management
Management functions should be reviewed and bottlenecks in implementation
of the Act identified. Planning and monitoring of programs is as important as
improving the quality of education imparted. Both require different set of skills.

Four tiers in the management structure need to be strengthened and empowered

to make implementation of the Act more effective.
i. The Centre should also address state-specific concerns and provide support,
if required. If some states are dragging their feet in implementing the Act, the
Centre can demand its implementation by linking it with the SSA and other
development grants.

ii. The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR), which is the
monitoring agency for implementation of the Act in different states, has not
been effective in many of them. It is therefore important to ensure that an
effective SCPCR is in place.

iii. Local authorities need to play a crucial role. Effective implementation of the
Act will depend on how effective Gram Panchayats (GPs) and Nagar Palikas
are. They need to be given sufficient resources to implement the Act.

iv. There should be a bottom-up approach and more autonomy given to schools.
These should then be monitored through independent mechanisms.

Innovations

There have been many innovations in the area of classroom transactions and
distribution of entitlements from which one can learn. Today, technology can be
put to good use to collect information and make planning more need-based. For
example, the Delhi Government has initiated online attendance of teachers. The
register closes at a specified time and teachers who do not mark their presence
up to that time are marked absent. Similarly, teachers desirous of seeking
transfers can make online requisitions and even give their preference for the
schools to which they wish to be transferred. This helps to streamline the
process of attendance and transfers.

Problems With The Right to Education Act

After India‟s Independence, one of the foremost concerns in acknowledging a
fundamental right to education had been the problem of „economic capabilities‟
of the State. Indeed, subsequent Governments have chosen to hide under the
garb of unavailability of resources in implementing National Policies on
Education. Several high-level Committee Reports have debunked the myth of
financial constraints and shown that the provision of free and compulsory
education at the elementary level is well within the wherewithal of the State. It
is this aspect that has, for the first time in over 60 years, been tacitly accepted
by the Government in passing the Act of 2009. The Act clearly mandates a
responsibility upon appropriate authorities to establish and maintain
infrastructural mechanisms to facilitate the guarantee of this right.

The mere proclamation of a right cannot tantamount to its fulfillment, and its
“actual enjoyment” is possible only when effective institutions are in place to
guarantee that right. A right to education is ineffective in the absence of a
school to ensure the enrollment of a child and to impart free, elementary
education. By taking on the duty to establish a school in every neighbourhood,
and stipulating conditions to aid the functioning of such schools, the
Government has taken the first step in the right direction. Having stated that,
there exist a number of problematic areas which need redressal in the scheme of
this legislation.

 One of the major concerns that the Act has left unanswered, is that of free
and compulsory education for children till the age of six years. While
Unnikrishnan emphatically proclaimed the right of all children to
elementary education till the age of 14, subsequent legislations and even
the Constitutional Amendment have diluted its ambit and confined free
and elementary education to children between six and fourteen. The
extensive body of research (from State and civil society) on the
importance of education at a pre-primary stage, our commitments to
international obligations, and the rising percentage of India‟s population
under the age of six, further corroborates the necessity to guarantee such
a right.
 In failing to realize the right of children to free and compulsory
education, the State has not taken on board the acute social milieu which
has hitherto presented problems in ensure elementary education. In order
to cope with the burgeoning problem of child labour, it is important to
ensure that children below the age of six are also brought within the
targets of the Act. It is a social reality that children are employed from a
very early age, in various circumstances within and outside their homes.
Therefore it is not sufficient that the right be guaranteed only from the
age of six, and must widen its scope to ensure the mitigation of child
abuse in formative years. In fact, the Act makes no reference to the Child
Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 and there is no categorical
statement which prohibits the employment or engagement of children,
which might hinder their prospects of education.
 Significantly, there is no effective mechanism to enforce the right
guaranteed under the Act. As provisions stated in the preceding segments
indicate, a local authority having jurisdiction may take up the complaint.
The provisions fail to identify the correct authority or State agency that
will hear grievances and enforce the right – a lesson is to be learnt from
successful legislations such as the NREG Act and the RTI Act, which
clearly provides for the responsible officer/agency to seek recourse under.
The State and National Commissions for Protection of Child Rights may
not be institutions accessed by all at the ground-level, and it is therefore
important to ensure the effective and speedy redressal of concerns.
 Further, the provisions result in a situation where the local authorities are
both the implementing functionaries (in school management, curriculum
development etc) and grievance redressal institutions. Clearly, there
would be several instances where interests conflict, which might result in
an inappropriate enforcement of the right. Consequently, the State‟s
correlative duty to guarantee the enjoyment of the right is considerably
affected in the absence of effective enforcement mechanisms.
 The Act stipulates that the State must establish a school within the limits
of neighbourhood, in order to ensure free and compulsory education.
However, there is no attempt made to define what a „neighbourhood‟
constitutes.Incidentally, the right of child to free and compulsory
education is limited to a neighbourhood school, except in the two
instances specified under S.5 of the Act. What the Act has done is to
borrow the erstwhile American concept of a neighbourhood school,
which was implemented in the US to bring about community harmony.
The onus in the West today is on (parental) choice, and it is important to
ensure that the lack of qualitative yardsticks does not impediment in the
exercise of this right.Thus we are confronted with a problematic situation
where parents would like to send their children to a private school X,
under the 25% quota provided to them by virtue of the Act, but would
probably be refused, since a Government school Y is established and
operational in the neighbourhood, even if the conditions there are
abysmal. This unfortunate situation ties in with the lack of qualitative
requirements under the Act.
 CONCLUSION

As is evident from data and feedback from respondents, there are

several issues that need to be addressed for effective implementation of
the RTE Act. Some of these can be resolved through legal recourse or
policy changes; others will need to be addressed as the Act is rolled out.
While the ultimate responsibility of providing education rests with the
Government, as enshrined in the Constitution, it is evident that the
Government’s efforts alone will not be sufficient to provide good quality
education to all. There are several pilot initiatives that have been taken
up by nonstateplayers. These initiatives are improving certain aspects of
education at some of the places where they are being implemented. The
formulation of the RTE Act has provided an opportunity to converge
different efforts by using it, with the National Policy on Education 1992
as the backdrop.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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