Blaming RTE, not underfunding: Education groups hit back at NITI Aayog working paper

 

By Jag Jivan 

A preliminary working paper by Arvind Virmani, economist and member of the Government of India think tank NITI Aayog, has concluded that the Right to Education (RTE) Act — enacted to guarantee free and compulsory schooling for children between six and fourteen — has actually worsened learning outcomes rather than improved them. The paper, published in March 2026 and reported by The Print on 16 April, has drawn sharp pushback from education rights advocates, who argue it builds a politically motivated narrative against constitutionally guaranteed entitlements.

Titled 'Education and Skilling for Employment: From Credentials to Learning Outcomes', the paper argues that India's school system produces certificates that bear little relation to actual learning. It warns that school degrees, as currently issued, do not necessarily build human capital if the majority of students lack minimum proficiency in reading and arithmetic. The paper's data is stark: in rural India, 42 per cent of Class 6 students cannot read a Class 2-level text, and 64 per cent of the same cohort cannot perform mathematical division. Several of the country's wealthiest states are, the paper suggests, moving backwards on foundational skills. On vocational training, it finds that fewer than half of ITI graduates and less than a third of polytechnic graduates can be considered employable.

The paper's findings are presented as conflicting with the progress narrative that has accompanied both the RTE and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It cautions that meeting the NEP 2020 goal of 100 per cent Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) will be a major challenge for Indian states — the 2025 deadline for this target having already passed without being met. India's tertiary-educated adult population, the paper notes, is the second-largest in the world after China — a figure it juxtaposes with the persistent absence of foundational competencies at the school level.

'Outcomes Over Inputs' Argument Used to Undermine the Right in RTE

Education activist and RTE Forum coordinator Mitra Ranjan has described the paper as an attempt to use the 'outcomes over inputs' argument to build a narrative against the rights-based constitutional framework of the RTE Act. Writing to fellow activists, Ranjan said the paper "shrugs off its responsibility to implement the law on the ground in true letter and spirit" while blaming the Act itself for failures that stem from the state's refusal to fund it adequately.

Ranjan warned that the paper's thrust is toward further privatisation and the substitution of direct benefit transfers (DBT) or school vouchers for statutory entitlements. "That directly undercuts the 'right' part of Right to Education," he said, arguing that shifting to vouchers or DBT transforms education into a market commodity rather than a justiciable right. RTE, he stressed, is not charity but a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21A of the Constitution.

Underfunding and Near-Zero Compliance the Real Story, Say Rights Groups

Ranjan and other education activists point to chronic underfunding as the proximate cause of poor learning outcomes — not the RTE Act itself. India has remained far below the long-standing recommendation of spending 6 per cent of GDP on education, a target set by the Kothari Commission and reaffirmed in successive policy documents, none of which the government has honoured in budgetary terms.

The compliance picture is equally damaging. The national average RTE compliance rate among schools stands at only 25.5 per cent. State-level figures reveal severe disparities: Meghalaya records compliance as low as 1.3 per cent, while Punjab, among the better performers, reaches 63.6 per cent. Sixteen years after the RTE Act was enacted, activists say there is still no concrete roadmap for universal implementation, and the government has shown no urgency about enforcing the law it is obligated to uphold.

Against this backdrop, Ranjan has called for a renewed nationwide public campaign to strengthen the public education system. He has appealed to education rights groups, civil society organisations, and activists to come together to collectively discuss the threat posed by the NITI Aayog paper and related efforts to reframe education as a service to be delivered through market mechanisms rather than as a right to be guaranteed by the state.

The working paper by Virmani is preliminary and has not yet been formally adopted as NITI Aayog policy. However, given the think tank's advisory role with the Union government, education rights advocates say its findings risk being deployed to justify policy shifts that would erode the statutory and constitutional foundations of the right to education in India.