Right to Education
The Right to Education Act (RTE), is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India.
The following Act guarantees free and compulsory education to all children between 6-18 years, the scheme which enforces the following Act is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is Government of India’s flagship programme which aims at achieving Universalization of Elementary Education in a time bound manner, by making free and compulsory education to the children between 6-14 years, a fundamental right.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan aims to bridge social, regional and gender gaps, with the active participation of the community in the management of schools.
• Providing equal opportunity for all children regardless of their social background.
• Providing a holistic view of education by revising and revamping the entire curriculum, teacher education, education planning and management.
• Bridging the gender gap in education by enabling the girl child access to education.
Under SSA the government plans of opening schools, improve the existing school conditions by constructing new classrooms, providing the teachers with adequate training, provision of toilets for hygiene and proper drinking water facilities.
- ANALYSIS OF SSA
The following graph depicts the awareness of SSA amongst the parents across different states during the period of 2003-2007; the highest being in Tamil Nadu that is, 96.7% followed by Assam at 90.8% and the lowest being in Uttar Pradesh, that is, 18.2%
The following graph depicts the awareness of SSA amongst the parents across different states during the period of 2003-2007; the highest being in Tamil Nadu that is, 96.7% followed by Assam at 90.8% and the lowest being in Uttar Pradesh, that is, 18.2%
The following table depicts the student attendance rates in different states and tries to formulate a relation with the availability of the midday meals. As we can see, student absenteeism is high in Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Whereas, in Tamil Nadu which also has the highest awareness of SSA has a student attendance record of 99.99% of students with attendance more than 75%.
One major limitation of the Right to Education Act is that it doesn’t account for Early Childhood Education (i.e. 3-6years), even though the government has included ECE under the ICDS scheme but instances have been reported where education has not been given its due importance.