What is the Right to Education Act? What is the National Education Policy 2020?

Published on: August 07,2021 15:20 IST

By Neha Choudhary

Introduction 

In the developing country India, in past years less than half of the population between the ages of 6 to 14 attends the school and the only 1/3rd of them reach 8th grade. 35 million Children in India do not attend school and are uneducated. The gap between male and female illiteracy remains a challenge with 25% illiteracy for males and 46% illiteracy for females.[1]

The major aspect of one’s life is education that plays a crucial role in an industrialized country where everything is technologically advanced. Education is the way to be successful in the future that everyone desires. ‘Education’ – the world itself states its meaning and the only thing that strikes in people’s minds is ‘knowledge’.

On contrary, education is not only the key to be knowledgeable but a tool to gain knowledge, to be skillful and talented for every path of their lives, being confident to lead their life according to their choices and demands.

Education is a weapon that teaches everyone the rights they are entitled to and the duties they are bound by. It encourages the person to achieve their targets and reach the heights which everybody desires to be and in a way is beneficial for the society in every manner possible; it gives the courage to fight for themselves against any maltreatment, discrimination, infringement, or cruelty.

Being educated is a paramount aspect in the world where everything is based on technology that keeps on changing with time no matter who is adapting to the transformation or not.

In India, where more than half of the population do not give utmost relevance and attention to the education system and most importantly where women remain unschooled and illiterate due to male chauvinism.

They must understand the importance of education and the need to be liberal about their children (irrespective of their gender) and wives to be educated. Most importantly education is a tool to survive in this competitive world where everyone is trying to fit and running their horns to be prosperous.

Education has the power to eradicate poverty from the country where most of the population are either poverty deficit or are on the poverty line and can barely survive.

This is a decisive and essential step that everyone should be taking as an educated person is an asset for a crime-free country. It has been seen that a certain percentage of the crimes have been committed by people who are not well educated.

Furthermore, it has to be assumed that crimes like theft, robbery, murder where money is involved have been committed by those who were in desperate need of them due to lack of a regular source of income and are not educated enough for a well-furnished job can be a reason.

There are higher chances where an educated and an accomplished being might not commit an abhorrent crime of rape or be prone to domestic violence as he would be well known about the punishment system, law, and order, and the consequences of the crime whereas on the other hand an uneducated person for not having enough knowledge and being illiterate would likely to commit the crime as it has also been well said that “one’s education define one’s acts”.

Certain old customs where widow’s remarriage was prohibited or Sati Pratha used to be a very crucial custom, or examples like Child Marriage, Dowry System, or Parda system, etc. can be demolished with an education system and helps in women empowerment which is very important in the 21st century.

Thus, the Government of India enacted various bills to amend the right of children to be educated. The Constitution provides the Right to Education and recently in 2020 the new education policy had been imposed that envisions a proper and must education system that would transform ‘Bharat’ into an equitable society.

What is the Right to Education Act?

The Indian Government has shown concern about the population who either due to helplessness, poverty, scarcity, or any other reason deficits in education.

The Government of India under Part III of the Constitution administers every citizen of the country the Right to Education as a Fundamental Right under Article 21A and abolished it from DPSPs.

Thus education is a fundamental right that the Constitution recognizes since 2002, yet millions of children are deprived of education and remain uneducated mainly due to poverty and distinct or recognizable reasons.

Formerly, education was not a fundamental right; it matured as a right after the pronouncements by the Honorable Supreme Court. At first, the education provision was inserted in Part IV of the Constitution under Article 45 and Article 39 (f) of DPSPs.

The first document which mentioned the legislation was the Ramamurti Committee Report in 1990 which was followed by the Supreme Court judgment in the case Unnikrishnan JP Vs State of Andhra Pradesh & Others[2] in 1993 which held that education is a fundamental right under Article 21.

The Constitution in its 86th Amendment Act took the initiative and inserted Article 21-A in the Constitution of India intending to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the age group of 6 to 14 years to ensure their better position in the society.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantee that right to education is a fundamental human right for everyone and has also been comprehensively mentioned in the Convention against Discrimination in Education.

The legislation (RTE) is a significant step that brought accountability in the education system of the country to ensure compulsory and basic knowledge for the children.

It got acknowledged and supported by the majority of state Government s and thus through its enactment the right to education became a fundamental right of every citizen in the country.

The fundamental Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act was passed by the Parliament in August 2009 to serve as an ultimate right that every child other than those who have been admitted by their parents is entitled to i.e. free and mandatory primary education of adequate and equitable quality in an academic school which satisfies certain fundamental norms and standards.

It also cited that no child will be accountable to pay any fees or expenses that curb them to pursue education as the Government and local authorities are obligated under the RTE Act to provide compulsory education and ensure their admission.

The right of children to free and compulsory education which is known as the Right to Education Act provides free and compulsory education till elementary school in a neighborhood school.

The ‘compulsory education’ specified in the name of the Act implies and clarifies the obligation of the concerned Government to provide incentives to ensure the compulsory completion of studies till elementary school. Further, the Act specifies that the admission of the child would be according to their age.

The RTE Act formulates the duties and responsibilities of the local authorities, Government , and parents towards the children to provide them free and compulsory education and share financial responsibility between central and state Government and lays down norms and standards related to Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs), buildings and infrastructure, school-working days and teacher-working hours.

The Act provides the rational deployment of teachers and maintenance of specified pupil-teacher ratio for each school to ensure that there is no urban-rural imbalance and provides the appointment of trained teachers with appropriate qualifications.

It also mentions that the curriculum development shall conform to the values enshrined under the Constitution to assure the child’s knowledge, potentiality, talent and that the child is free of fear, agony, and anxiety and to build all-around opportunities for the child.

The Act states certain constraints as well. These are:

  • It prohibits physical punishment and mental harassment.
  • It prohibits screening procedures for admission of children.
  • It prohibits capitation fee.
  • It prohibits private tuition by teachers.
  • It prohibits the running of schools without recognition.
  • It prohibits the deployment of teachers for non-educational work, other than the decennial census, elections to the local authority, state legislatures and parliament, and disaster relief.

The Government has passed several amendment bills about the right of children for free and compulsory education commenced with the Right to Education Act, 2009 then the Bill was amended in 2010, 2017 and again in 2019 and etc. for advancing certain provisions with developing times.

The 2009 Act administered certain crucial features with the purpose to advance the education system in the country and providing education at a base level to every child.

The RTE Act was enacted in 2009 to provide primary education to a certain age group (6 to 14 years) which later got altered in the 2020 amendment Bill recently. The 25% reservation for disadvantaged sections of the society which includes SCs, STs, differently-abled children, or those who belong to backward classes was mandated by the act.

The 2009 Act also had the ‘no detention policy’ which was later removed by the 2019 amendment bill.

The 2019 Bill clearly stated that compelling children to repeat a session would be demotivating which would force them to abandon school and thus the provision was added regarding the regular examination in classes 5 to 8 with an addition to an opportunity to take a re-examination within two months after the remedial classes and further it would be state Government’s discretion to detain the child or not for consequent failures.

What is the Significance of Right to Education?

It was the central Government’s initiative to provide education as a fundamental right to which every citizen is entitled and not just any provision under DPSPs which is not mandatory. The right-based approach by the central Government to provide every child with basic elementary education casts a legal obligation on parents, local authorities, or concerned Government to provide compulsory education.

The RTE Act holds a significant position as it not just provide an opportunity to an individual to be successful in life but for the advancement of the nation as well.

The Act lays down the standards of the deployment of well-trained teachers with the best qualifications to ensure the quality of education that each child would be getting.

The provision regarding the student-teacher ratio also ensures quality education. The provision that curbs the imbalance of postings in urban and rural areas is a considerable initiative to fill the gap in the quality and numbers concerning education in the rural areas as compared to urban areas.

The Act explicitly mentions the safe environment facilities in the school as it addresses separate toilet facilities for girls and boys and other classroom conditions and pertinent facilities related to safe drinking water etc.

It also ensures that each child is safe and protected as it completely prohibits harassment and discrimination against any child based on religion, race, caste, sex, or economic background.

The initiative of the Government to safeguard weaker sections of the society so that they are not deprived of basic education thus the RTE Act under Section 12(1) (c) mandated that all private schools would reserve 25% to the children who belong to disadvantaged sections to ensure equal opportunity and impartiality in the country in the field of education.

The Act also establishes a grievance committee to ensure that all the objections and resentments related to the provisions that are not being complied with are heard and solved accordingly.

The presence of the grievance mechanism ensures the smooth functioning of all the provisions provided by the act.

Thus the legislation has proved to be a successful initiative by the Government as according to the current stats, the enrolment in the primary classes has been increased by 19.4% from 2009 and only 3.3% of the children did not attend the school.

However, recently the Government has passed an amended Bill in 2020 with revised provisions to cut down the percentage of children who did not attend the school.

National Education Policy 2020 – The Amended Bill

The education system of India was expected to bring out profound modifications and differences after the new policy was proposed replacing the 1986 Policy on education by the central Government and approved by the union cabinet in 2020.

The policy represents the comprehensive framework from elementary education to higher education i.e. from school to college. It also includes provisions related to vocational training in both urban as well rural India where it is difficult to pursue education due to low sources of income.

The motive of the national policy is to transform the education system of India by 2021 and to make “India a global knowledge superpower”.

The New Education Policy envisions the various criteria related to school education as well as college education and aims to achieve the twin objective of inclusion and excellence.

The provisions related to school and higher education are as follows:

  • The policy aimed to bring out the children back to the track of being educated by an open schooling system and universalizing the education from school to college.
  • The current 10+2 system has been replaced with a new 5+3+3+4 system concerning the ages 3-8, 8-11, 11-14, and 14-18 years respectively expanding the age bar from 6-14 to 3-18 years. The previous acts did not cover the children below the age of 6 and above the age of 14 which was highly criticized as the age from 3 to 6 is a crucial age for mental development and thus such an amendment was made. Moreover, it also involved 12 years of schooling with three years of Anganwadi/ pre-schooling.
  • According to the New Education Policy, it was mentioned that the board exams held for class 10 and 12 students shall be prepared to test core aptitude and capabilities rather than the memorizing power of the children and thus shall be made easy with two parts i.e. objective and descriptive and it also included that each child will be allowed to take two attempts. The standards for Board exams have been established by an assessment body, PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development).
  • The policy also mentioned that there would be no segregation between the academic streams, extracurricular, vocational streams in schools and students would have the liberty to choose their stream and the same shall start from class 6 with internships.
  • It was directed by the National Education Policy 2020 that no language shall be imposed on any student and medium of instruction as well as teaching shall be in their mother tongue or regional language at least up to grade 5 and preferably till grade 8 as India is extremely proud of their diversities and has given each language the due respect. This has also been explicitly mentioned that the norms are mandatory to be functioned by every public as well as a private school.
  • The current Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education is 26.3%. Thus, the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) set up a single mechanism for entire higher education except for the fields of medicine and law and the norms and regulations shall be applied in every college no matter public or private. The Government aims to phase out the affiliation of colleges in 15 years and a stage-wise mechanism is to be established for granting graded autonomy to colleges.
  • National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC) for regulation,
  • General Education Council (GEC) for standard-setting,
  • Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) for funding,
  • National Accreditation Council (NAC) for accreditation
  • The new education policy also provided a flexible curriculum with the duration of 3 to 4 years where the student will be given multiple exit options within the duration with an appropriate certificate of competition. It has also provided the Academic Bank of Credit to grant and facilitate the transfer of credits.

The 2020 policy had been opened for other changes as well that include:

  • The establishment of the National Educational Technology Forum (NETF) ensures the free swap of opinions and perceptions about technology to strengthen learning, assessment, planning, or administration.
  • It also opened ways for foreign universities to set up their branches in India for better education and the future.
  • It emphasizes setting up Gender Inclusion Fund, Special Education Zones for the weaker and deprived sections of the society as due to various noticeable reasons they could not afford higher studies. According to the reports, currently, India spends around 4.6 % of its total GDP on education.

Conclusion 

Education being the most important aspect of one’s life gives the person, that determination to lead his life, that courage to fight all atrocities in the society and enhances the knowledge, skill, and talent that would ultimately aid him to be a successful personality and reach a pedestal that everyone desires and envious of.

Education since 2002 has been enshrined under the Constitution of India as a fundamental right under Article 21 that every child is entitled to and thus has been removed as a DPSP.

The reasons due to which some children remain deprived of their right to be educated have to be curtailed with the enactment of the legislation that ensures free and mandatory education to every child.

This legislation which is known as the Right to Education Act used to provide free and compulsory education from age 6 to 14 years, however, it has been amended in the 2020 Education Policy which expanded the scope and included the children below the age of 6 and above 14 years of age along with other remarkable provisions and thus stated to be a tremendous initiative in the field of education as the change is mandatory with developing times to ensure their survival.

References

  1. Indian Education Report, “India Education Profile” available at ncee.org ( last visited on August 8, 2021)
  2. Unnikrishnan JP Vs State of Andhra Pradesh & Other, 1993 AIR 2178

Related Post