Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 29 (IANS) Nearly a year after the ambitious Right to Education (RTE) was enacted, it faces numerous challenges such as high dropout rates, lack of schools and lack of monitoring agencies to check implementation of the act in several states, an NGO here said Tuesday.

According to CRY, an international child rights organisation, while the gross enrolment ratio (GER) here is encouraging - from Class 1 to 8, it is 94.9 percent and from Class 1-12 it is 77 percent - it hardly gives the big picture of the education scenario.

“The GER does not take into account the number of those who actually attend school, and how many drop out. Government schools lose 25 percent of their students by grade 5, and almost half (46 percent) by grade 8,” a CRY statement said Tuesday.

It added, “80,43,889 children in the 6-14 age group fall into the ‘never enrolled’ category, and are out of school.”

Then again, many children are not in school simply because there is none. The RTE Act promises free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of six to 14.

“17,282 eligible habitations in India do not have a primary school within one kilometre of the habitation. Within the sphere of infrastructure, 1,48,696 government schools in India are without a building, 16,5742 schools without drinking water, and 4,55,561 schools without toilets,” it said.

“1,14,531 primary schools are single-teacher schools. So very little progress has been made on this front,” the statement added.

Also, the RTE Act mandates that state commissions for protection of child rights (SCPCR) should be responsible for monitoring the implementation of the act. In those states where they are not constituted, the department of education can form a Right to Education Protection Authority (REPA) to look into the monitoring aspect.

“However, only nine states have SCPCRs and two states in the absence of SCPCR have constituted REPAs, thus leaving 16 states out of 27 without an authority to monitor implementation of the RTE Act,” it said.

Kreeanne Rabadi, regional director of CRY, said: “It is interesting to note that a major portion of the allocations to education is earmarked for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which, according to the government, is the main vehicle to implement the RTE Act.”

“However, our analysis says the government’s allocation to the SSA has increased by only 10.53 percent, most of which comes from the two percent education cess on central taxes. The allocations from sources other than that have gone down from Rs.7769.10 crore (Revised Estimate 2010-11) to Rs.7096.15 crore (Budget Estimate 2011-12). So, insufficient budgets is an issue that needs to be addressed,” she added.

“So, the one-year-on report card is discouraging, but not hopeless. However, what is clear is that this slow movement will not lead to any major shifts in India’s public education,” Rabadi added.