4.1 Issues and challenges
Right to Education as a Fundamental right under article 21A The Right as has been envisaged under Article 21A suffers from inherent lacunas and lapses. It is misconceived and flawed insofar that:
(a) Article 21A excludes almost 172 crore children up to six years of age from the provision of Fundamental Right to free early childhood care and pre-primary education;
(b) The words ‘as the Sate may, by law, determine’ further restricts the scope of Fundamental Right of even the 6-14 year age group by making the Fundamental Right conditional of the whims and fancies of the State. This has given the State the instrumentality to arbitrarily restrict, dilute and distort the Fundamental Right given through Article 21A ; …show more content…
(i) government or local authority schools; (ii) privately managed but fully or partly government-aided schools; (iii) elite government schools of specific categories such as Central Schools, Navodaya Vidyalayas, Sainik Schools, XI Plan 's 6,000 model schools being set up by the central government and similar schools of the state/UT governments such as Sarvodaya and Pratibha Vikas Vidyalayas (Delhi State), Residential Schools (Andhra Pradesh) and Utkrishta Vidyalayas (Madhya Pradesh); and (iv) private unaided schools. Within each of these four categories, there is going to be a whole range of schools - from (a) those government and private schools that barely fulfill the infrastructural norms as required by the Schedule in the Act to (b) those schools, again both government and private, which will be reasonably well-endowed (e.g. with Pupil-Teacher Ratios of 1:20 to 1:25 and teachers for fine arts, physical SP education and computers) and, finally, to (c) those which will arrogantly claim to be 'over-endowed ' with air-conditioned class rooms, swimming pools, round the clock internet-coverage etc. The Act co-exist with this disparity-based multi layered school system and thereby the rue object of the Act is …show more content…
In the name of right to free and compulsory education it ca not compel children to study in inferior schools in the neighbourhood distorting the very concept of ‘neighbourhood school’ as defined by the Act.
(e) Further the Act strongly advocates for no detention policy till the child complete elementary education. In a system where quality education is being emphasized, non-detention appears to be an unacceptable norm in schools. In this manner, the Act fails to provide any minimum learning outcome.
(f) The Act is silent on how the problem of excessive shortage of teachers is going to be resolved. In this backdrop, presence of qualified teachers still remains a distant goal. In the absence of competent teachers who are considered the pillars of education, it would be next to impossible for the Act to realistically achieve its goal. As is evident from the Act, the school drop outs and others would be brought back into the education stream again; it would entail hiring almost double the number of
Right to Education as a Fundamental right under article 21A The Right as has been envisaged under Article 21A suffers from inherent lacunas and lapses. It is misconceived and flawed insofar that:
(a) Article 21A excludes almost 172 crore children up to six years of age from the provision of Fundamental Right to free early childhood care and pre-primary education;
(b) The words ‘as the Sate may, by law, determine’ further restricts the scope of Fundamental Right of even the 6-14 year age group by making the Fundamental Right conditional of the whims and fancies of the State. This has given the State the instrumentality to arbitrarily restrict, dilute and distort the Fundamental Right given through Article 21A ; …show more content…
(i) government or local authority schools; (ii) privately managed but fully or partly government-aided schools; (iii) elite government schools of specific categories such as Central Schools, Navodaya Vidyalayas, Sainik Schools, XI Plan 's 6,000 model schools being set up by the central government and similar schools of the state/UT governments such as Sarvodaya and Pratibha Vikas Vidyalayas (Delhi State), Residential Schools (Andhra Pradesh) and Utkrishta Vidyalayas (Madhya Pradesh); and (iv) private unaided schools. Within each of these four categories, there is going to be a whole range of schools - from (a) those government and private schools that barely fulfill the infrastructural norms as required by the Schedule in the Act to (b) those schools, again both government and private, which will be reasonably well-endowed (e.g. with Pupil-Teacher Ratios of 1:20 to 1:25 and teachers for fine arts, physical SP education and computers) and, finally, to (c) those which will arrogantly claim to be 'over-endowed ' with air-conditioned class rooms, swimming pools, round the clock internet-coverage etc. The Act co-exist with this disparity-based multi layered school system and thereby the rue object of the Act is …show more content…
In the name of right to free and compulsory education it ca not compel children to study in inferior schools in the neighbourhood distorting the very concept of ‘neighbourhood school’ as defined by the Act.
(e) Further the Act strongly advocates for no detention policy till the child complete elementary education. In a system where quality education is being emphasized, non-detention appears to be an unacceptable norm in schools. In this manner, the Act fails to provide any minimum learning outcome.
(f) The Act is silent on how the problem of excessive shortage of teachers is going to be resolved. In this backdrop, presence of qualified teachers still remains a distant goal. In the absence of competent teachers who are considered the pillars of education, it would be next to impossible for the Act to realistically achieve its goal. As is evident from the Act, the school drop outs and others would be brought back into the education stream again; it would entail hiring almost double the number of