Right To Education Act In India And It’s Future Implementation

After crossing many barriers, the much talked about Act i.e. “The Right of Children to free and Compulsory Education Act” , was passed by parliament in August last year.

After much discussion and consultation the government has finalized the expenditure sharing between State and Centre in the ratio of 65-35. 65 percent expenditure will be borne by the Centre government and rest will be by the State government for implementing the law making education a fundamental Right.

Sixteen years after the idea was first mooted, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 has finally been notified, after receiving the assent of the President of India.

Article 21-A, as inserted by the Constitution (Eighty-Sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, provides for free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right.

Consequently, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, has been enacted by the Parliament.

“This was a matter of national importance for UPA (United Progressive Alliance). This bill is just not about taking children to school. This is a bill that speaks about quality education, it speaks about the physical infrastructure, teacher-pupil ratio, qualification of teachers,” Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal said.

The salient features of the Right of Education Bill are:

1: Free and compulsory education to all children of India in the six to 14 age group.

2: No child shall be held back, expelled, or required to pass a board examination until completion of elementary education.

3: A child who completes elementary education (upto class 8th) shall be awarded a certificate.

4: Calls for a fixed student-teacher ratio.

5: Will apply to all of India except Jammu and Kashmir.

6: Provides for 25 percent reservation for economically disadvantaged communities in admission to Class One in all private schools.

7: Mandates improvement in quality of education.

8: School teachers will need adequate professional degree within five years or else will lose job.

9: School infrastructure (where there is problem) to be improved in three years, else recognition cancelled.

10: Financial burden will be shared by state and central government.

But in my opinion rigorous efforts should be made to implement this law in rural area where 70 percent of child labors work in agriculture where access of school is severely limited and non availability of trained teacher makes the situation worsen. I feel that, to solve the problem of Trained teacher , the teachers who got the appointment in capital schools, after giving them proper training they should be transferred to their native place, because they will be more friendly and close to these people. These teachers can explain them about the importance of education and mentally prepared their parents to their children to school. I would like to mention one point “ In our Indian society this is the mentality the girls shouldn’t sent to schools there is no need to educate them, as after a particular age they will be married and get settled in life. I want to change this thought as I feel, in a family mother plays a vital role in the upbringing of child. If she is educated she can guide her children in proper way, can manage her home systematically, and if she is financially independent, it will be more helpful economically also.

I want that literacy rate in our country should be hundred percent, we should leave no stone unturned to achieve this target. The major role of education is to create an educated society, it also make an individual to become a more refined member of a society. Education makes man a right thinker and correct decision maker. Illiteracy is a major hindrance to human development. People who are not educated have less opportunity to do what they want to do. So I want that parents should be more concerned about the education of their children, and teacher must be completely devoted to their student education. I am sure if we all will work honestly for the successful implementation of this education Act, then after few years there will be no child found working as a laborer or begging on the roads.

Shantiniketan- The Abode of Learning

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”
- Rabindranath Tagore

More than 100 years of excellence is no mean achievement. And when the field is education it is also a noble one. ‘Bolpur’, a small town in West Bengal, holds the unique distinction of having this university of excellence, called Visva Bharti University, giving India many luminaries.

It all started with the person who gave two nations, India and Bangladesh their national anthems. The person was the first Indian to become a Noble laureate; the person, whom Mahatma Gandhi gave the title of ‘Gurudev’- Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore.

In 1862, when Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath, was taking a boat ride, he came across a landscape of red soil and lush green paddy fields. Rows of palm grove and chhatim trees charmed him. He built a small house there and planted some saplings. Then it was called Bhubandanga, named after a local dacoit called Bhuban Dakat. Debendranath Tagore decided to call this place Shantiniketan after the serenity it brought to his soul. He turned it into a spiritual centre where people from all religions, castes and creed came and participated in meditation. In the year 1863, Debendranath Tagore established an ‘Ashram’ at that place and he himself became the initiator for the Brahmo Samaj.

In the years to come Maharishi Debndranath’s son, Rabindranath went on to become one of the most formidable literary forces this nation had ever produced. However, Tagore was not content with his poetic and literary influence on this nation alone. He seriously wanted to nurture quality education for the people of India. For this noble purpose, he decided to open a school in 1901. He opened a school in Shantiniketan and called it Brahmachary Ashram. He gave an entirely new meaning to the word education. He took education system to the glorious old days of Gurukul system. The aim of this school was to blend the new Western and the traditional Eastern system of education.

In the words of Tagore, “Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.” He believed that children’s minds are extremely sensitive to the influences of the world around them. Their minds are always imbibing some lessons and they actually realize the joy of knowing. He believed that children’s minds are absolutely malleable and so it is easy to infuse them with knowledge so that they can attain greater heights in their life. He believed that children should be surrounded with nature which has an educational value of its own. So he established a school where the students would be free in spite of being in a school.

In his school students were not only imparted the everyday subjects but emphasis was also given on vocational education. It prepared the students for what lay out there in the future outside the realms of the school. Tagore himself had dropped out from school as he felt claustrophobic in the enclosure of four walls. He found his mind getting stuck in them. In that era it was a path breaking step in the arena of education for a country which was slowly getting hitched to the European mode of education in closed classes, where knowledge was only textual and exam oriented.

In the year 1913, Tagore was presented with the Noble Prize for literature for his book of poems ‘Geetanjali’. It not only enhanced India’s position but also upped the prestige of Shantiniketan. After this, in 1921, he converted the little school into a university and called it Visva Bharti- where the world makes a home in a nest is how Tagore chose to define the institution. Whereas the university gives degree courses in humanities, science and the more regular streams of knowledge, it on the other hand hones the latent talents in their students. Its art college, Kala Bhavan, is considered to be one of the best art colleges in the world. Tagore believed that, “In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.” Although it has adapted to the changing times, the essence and ambience of the University is still maintained as Gurudev wanted it to be. Visva Bharti is a true reflection of our cultural heritage and what wonders education can do to society if taken on the right path.

The greatness and diversity of this University can easily be understood if one looks at the alumni that this institution has produced. If we have on one hand the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, then on the other hand it has given the nation a fiery Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Presumably the greatest film maker India ever produced and got an Academy for his lifelong works, Satyajit Ray was also a product of this institution. Other noted luminaries were Maharani Gayatri Devi, Abdul Ghani Khan. The notable painter Nandalal Bose was the principal of the Kala Bhavan.

Tagore was also very culturally inclined. He started the Basant Utsav and the Pous Utsav. The Pous Utsav is celebrated with the foundation day of the University when the entire campus breaks into a happy atmosphere of songs, tribal dances, baul performances etc. The Basant Utsav is celebrated on the occasion of Holi. The Holi of Shantiniketan is famous world over for its colourful mood and various cultural programmes. Other events like the Sarodotsav, Maghotsav and Brikhsharopan Utsav are also celebrated with pomp and fervour.

It was a stroke of brilliance on part of Gurudev to have come up with a concept of such a fine institution at a time when India was following the traditional bandwagon of education. In Shantiniketan, Gurudev not only gave the country some of the best talents, but he himself also revelled in their success. It is here that he produced some of his best literary works. Rabindranath Tagore dreamt of a unique system of education. He was a visionary who had the will power to translate them to reality. The University of Visva Bharati is a proof of it. Even in the 21st century, Shantiniketan has retained the sanctity of an ashram while being very much a part of the contemporary world.

He said once, “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

A school that children call “theirs”

Padmini and Ram Mani show how socially and economically disadvantaged children discover the magic of education in their vibrant school free of cost

When I walked into the little red brick building called “My School Satya Surabhi (MYSS)”, it looked like a summer camp, set among lush green trees and buzzing with activity. The school was awash with cheer and laughter. Smiling children in bright red uniforms played energetically, practised yoga, sang songs and attended their classes. Vivid art and posters hung along the walls. In the midst of the cacophony of a school, there was a silent discipline and order too.

A shy but confident class VII boy welcomed me to his school and village, and presented me a sapling explaining its special features. “He is an electrician's son,” someone whispered.

Padmini Mani, greying and elegant, emerged with folded hands. Her entrance ushered in a flutter of activities and loving ebullience. The smaller ones hugged her and clung to her and a few dragged her to a cardboard train to sing with them.

When her friend Mark Antrobus fixed up the interview, he had said I would not find a scrap of litter in the school campus. “Neither will you find another school of this kind in the region which has opened its doors only to the children of the toiling and ignored from surrounding villages.”

Unassuming

I knew I was here in Attuvampatti Village, seven km outside Kodailkanal, to interview Padmini and her husband Ram much against their wishes. They wanted only the school to be featured, not them, so that others would be inspired to start similar schools elsewhere.

“We have a wonderful atmosphere here. We take pride in our school and its environment. All children are encouraged to keep the school grounds clean and litter free,” says Padmini, having steered the school through a period of growth in the last decade.

Sitting on two acres of greenery and cooled by the breezes of Palani Hills, MYSS maintains a low profile. There are 102 students enrolled at present, from nursery to Class VIII. The school started 12 years ago in a temporary shed with 20 children of farm workers, petty vendors, daily wagers and migrant labourers. Today, it has come to be the envy of even schools for the well-to-do.

When Ram, a management professional, first came to Kodaikanal in 1993, he fell in love with the verdure. Padmini, then heading the Department of Foreign Languages in The British School at Delhi, came to the town as vice principal of Kodaikanal Christian College. Six years later, the couple's vision for “equality and education, and the right of every child to call a place ‘my school” took shape.

“During a casual conversation, a milkman told us the village needed a school,” says Padmini. “This appeal coupled with the influence of my parents, who taught us service without reward, propelled us into action.”

Starting the school, she admits, was easier than running it.

They put out pamphlets highlighting the school's core values and got 40 applications, but in the first year they could take in only 20 children given the space and availability of teachers. Now, the school's links with the local community stretch beyond Attuvampatti to neighbouring Pallangi and Vilpatti.

The couple asserts their school is “not a commercial venture”. They consider it a secular non-profit educational institution. They charge only one time admission fee of Rs.25, and work to provide quality education, books, class materials, uniforms, noon meals, and extra-curricular activities absolutely free of cost.

A dynamo of energy and ideas, Padmini puts enthusiasm into her students and teachers: “I keep communicating with them and run a continual training programme that ratchets them up.”

Ram is heartened with the many successes of students who integrated into other mainstream schools after class VIII. “When children spend years here playing, learning and relating, they have had a great childhood,” he says. “Examinations become secondary. Our kids are self-assured with a positive outlook.”

Padmini adds that most of the students are doing well either academically or in sports and other fields. “The values we teach them here, they carry through their lives and are equipped to face challenges. Our teachers together ensure that the children gain maximum academic and social benefits from their time at the school, where they develop long-lasting friendships.”

While the students are challenged academically through a range of projects and classwork, sports is also a big part of school life. Chess, yoga and athletics champions have already emerged from the school. The teachers emphasize language and learning through song, dance and drama, and they follow a philosophy of “thematic teaching”, where there is a connectivity between subjects.

This couple, silently trying to change the face of India in one remote corner of the country, are delighted at the decision they made 18 years ago. “We have to build up the institution, individuals do not matter. For us, it is like culmination of life experience here by making an impact,” says Padmini.

But for her and Ram, these children would never have got a chance. Indeed, it has become a different world out here.

Salient features

MYSS was declared one of the top 100 schools in India in a national contest called Design for Change last September. The students helped clean and beautify the Vilpatti bus stand and the nearby rural settlement Kota Teru. The school also bagged a special prize in the INTACH Heritage Club competition 2010 and the Bisnoi Trophy for environmental awareness and preservation 2010.

Up to primary level, MYSS is recognized by the Tamil Nadu State Education Department. For middle school, it is under the Open Basic Education Programme of the National Institute of Open Schools, Union Ministry of Human Resources Development.

Raison d'etre of MYSS is value acquisition. Emphasis is on life values like basic hygiene, civic sense, environmental sensitivity, honesty and on becoming a good and responsible citizen.

MYSS is run by the Satya Surabhi Trust. Among the six trustees are Padmini's elder sister Mohini Giri (founder chairperson of National Women's Commission and daughter-in-law of former President V.V. Giri) and Kathak exponent and author Jigyasa Giri.