Right to Education Act comes into force Thursday

NEW DELHI - The much awaited Right to Eduction (RTE) Act, which promises free and compulsory education up to Class 8, will be implemented Thursday with an address to the nation by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The act will provide for education to students in the age group of 6-14 and specially focus on bringing back 8.1 million children of this age group back to the classrooms.

There are a lot of expectations from this act and we hope that it will deliver good primary education to all sections of society, a senior official of the human resource development (HRD) ministry told IANS.

The act, which was passed by parliament last year, seeks to achieve 10 broad objectives such as free and compulsory education in the 6-14 age group, quality education, focus on social responsibility like reservation in private schools, the obligation of teachers and de-bureaucratisation of admissions.

The RTE Act promises to create conducive educational atmosphere for physically handicapped children. It also seeks to make learning student-oriented rather than teacher- and classroom-oriented.

However, it faces a major challenge in the form of deficit in finance, quality of teachers and inadequate infrastructure in the beginning years.

In the first year of its implementation (2010-11), the scheme is facing a shortage of nearly Rs.7,000 crore and there is a huge deficit of trained teachers especially in eastern India.

The act is starting now, but its real outcome will be visible in a couple of years. We are set for an educational transformation in India, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters here a few days back.

–Indo-Asian New Service