When just 8% schools comply with Right to Education, retaining "weak" children in same class will punish millions

By Mitra Ranjan*
The Right to Education (RTE) Forum has strongly condemned the passing of ‘The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017 in Lok Sabha. It has scrapped the ‘no detention’ provision. Ambarish Rai, National Convener, RTE Forum, has said, "No detention withdrawn by the Government of India in parliament will punish millions of children despite systemic failures and non-implementation of RTE Act.”
Rai said that there is no established cause-effect link between "learning levels" and "no detention policy".
Accordint to him, “It is the poor quality of education, lack of infrastructure, teacher vacancies and the presence of untrained teachers that may have an effect on learning outcomes. No detention clause, one of the most critical parts of RTE Act, now pulled out, has put the entire RTE Act at risk of disintegration. The greatest negative impact will be on disadvantaged groups, first generation learners and Adivasi students along with the girl children.”
He also said that this bill has been introduced on the pretext of impacting learning outcome but the government didn’t bother ever to implement CCE (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation) on ground.
“It must be noted that the consequence of detaining a child in the same class works adversely on the child’s psyche and has an impact on his/her self-esteem. It often affects the child’s motivation to continue in school which results in drop-out or rather, being pushed out of the school system,” Rai added.
Rai further reminded that even after eight years of the enactment of the RTE Act, the schoos' compliance with RTE norms and standrads is only 8% which is a shame on a democratic welfare state. But instead of deleivering on the responsibilities, the state is going on the other way to weaken the minimum rights provided by the Constitution.

Provisions of the amendment

The Lok Sabha passed the amendment on Wednesday in order to do away with to the existing policy prohibits schools from detaining students till they complete elementary education. In India, elementary school runs from Class 1 to Class 8.
The amendment says that states can choose to hold a regular examination either at the end of Classes 5 and 8, or both. Students who fail this test will get additional instruction and the opportunity to appear for a re-examination within two months of the declaration of the result. If the students still do not pass the exam, the state government may decide to detain them.
However, if states choose, they can continue the no-detention policy all the way to Class 8. No child can be expelled from school before they complete elementary education, the amendment bill states.
The proposal for amendment was introduced in August 2017 and referred to a Standing Committee of the Rajya Sabha. The committee presented its report to both the Houses of Parliament in February, endorsing the amendment bill “in its present form”.
Apart tyhe RTE Forum, another NGO which has opposed the amendment is Social Research and Development Foundation, based in Bihar. “If children are not learning at school and the answer of the government is to hold them back and ultimately push them out, that is a very wrong policy decision,” it said. “It can only be hoped that states will not make use of it. Really wondering that you appreciate it.”
The no-detention policy of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, banned the practice of making under-performing children repeat classes in elementary school to ensure they do not drop out. It was meant to reduce the emphasis on year-end examinations and replace it with a form of evaluation that would track students’ progress through the year.
---
*With inputs from other media sources

Comments

India’s climate tech ecosystem in dire need of both early, growth-stage funding: Report

By Our Representative India’s climate tech ecosystem, which boasts over 800 startups, is in dire need of both early and growth-stage funding to leverage its full potential, according to a report by Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (Ventures) and MUFG Bank , Japan. Despite a robust initial funding landscape, with approximately two-thirds of climate tech startups receiving seed capital, growth-stage investments remain critically lacking.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded reaction in the form of a link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah* The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.

105,000 sign protest petition, allege Nestlé’s 'double standard' over added sugar in baby food

By Kritischer Konsum* 105,000 people have signed a petition calling on Nestlé to stop adding sugar to its baby food products marketed in lower-income countries. It was handed over today at the multinational’s headquarters in Vevey, where the NGOs Public Eye, IBFAN and EKO dumped the symbolic equivalent of 10 million sugar cubes, representing the added sugar consumed each day by babies fed with Cerelac cereals. In Switzerland, such products are sold with no added sugar. The leading baby food corporation must put an end to this harmful double standard.

Bayer's business model: 'Monopoly control over chemicals, seeds'

By Bharat Dogra* The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has rendered a great public service by very recently publishing a report titled ‘Bayer’s Toxic Trails’ which reveals how the German agrochemical giant Bayer has been lobbying hard to promote glyphosate and GMOs, or trying to “capture public policy to pursue its private interests.” This report, written by Joao Camargo and Hans Van Scharen, follows Bayer’s toxic trail as “it maintains monopolistic control of the seed and pesticides markets, fights off regulatory challenges to its toxic products, tries to limit legal liability, and exercises political influence.”

UNEP report on how climate crisis is impacting displacement, global conflicts, declining health

By Shankar Sharma* A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled "A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing," warrants urgent attention from our country’s developmental perspective. The findings, detailed in the report, should be a source of significant concern not only globally but especially for our nation, which has a vast population and limited natural resources.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Industries fueling climate crisis draining public funds in Global South: ActionAid

By Our Representative A new ActionAid report has exposed the alarming financial drain on the Global South, as climate-wrecking industries like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture receive over US$600 billion annually in public subsidies. The report, "How the Finance Flows: Corporate Capture of Public Finance Fuelling the Climate Crisis in the Global South", reveals that an average of US$677 billion in public finance is directed toward climate-destructive sectors each year, depriving crucial social sectors such as education.

75 years of revolution: How China moved away from ideals of struggle for human liberation

By Harsh Thakor* On October 1st, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, a pivotal moment in the struggle for human liberation. From 1949 to 1976, China achieved remarkable social equality and revolutionary democracy, outpacing other developing nations in literacy, health care, agricultural output, and industrial production.

Search This Blog