The Right to Education Act provides a reservation of 25% to the disadvantaged students. There are 21.4 lakh seats reserved under this act but due to the poor implementation of only 29 % have been filled in the last five years.
Covering the private schools of 28 states and taking into consideration the data of District Information System for Education (DISE) 2013-14 an exhaustive report named -- State of the Nation: RTE Section 12(1) (C), has been published by IIM, Ahmedabad, and Central Square Foundation.
There is an imbalance across the states.
|
STATE |
% OF SEATS FILLED |
TOTAL |
|
DELHI |
92 |
38,297 |
|
MADHYA PRADESH |
88 |
1.82 lakh |
|
ANDHRA PRADESH |
0.2 |
1.72 lakh |
|
UTTAR PRADESH |
3 |
5.84 lakh |
|
TAMIL NADU |
11 |
1.43 lakh |
|
MAHARASHTRA |
19 |
1.42 lakh |
|
BIHAR |
20.78 |
18,930 |
|
WEST BENGAL |
32.05 |
54,097 |
Also according to the report only 45,000 private unaided schools with class 1 had students from the EWS category out of a total of 2.06 lakh.
|
STATE |
PERCENTAGE |
|
ANDHRA PRADESH |
0.1 |
|
ODISHA |
1 |
|
UTTAR PRADESH |
2 |
|
DELHI |
48 |
|
UTTARAKHAND |
43 |
|
RAJASTHAN |
65 |
.The inconsistency of the DISE Data and the data displayed on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan website, state websites is an issue of major concern
Also the responses filed by the authors in the RTI queries were incoherent.
Anita Kaul is the former secretary of the department of justice and also played a crucial for drafting and implementing the RTE Act.
She informed that this is the only act in which the rules were drafted in one year.
It is this reason that some of the rules have to be reviewed and the various issues are looked into.
The shortcomings of the RTE Act can be scrutinized with a detailed study
According to the Act there is a 25 reservation on the pre-school classes wherever they exist.
However there are uncertainties whether the entry level criteria shall be applied from class 1 or pre-school
The basic aim of the 25% reservation was to make the admissions more equitable to all the sections of the society. The differences and the diversity of the country must be respected.
However the report suggests an idea to adopt a centralized lottery date for determining the 25 %reservation.
To Kaul this centralization of the lottery date is not fair as the India is a diverse country.
To make the classroom transaction become more democratic and inclusive the curriculum must be looked upon.