The Right to Education Act or RTE provides to every child from the age of six to fourteen years the right to free and compulsory education in a neighbourhood school until the completion of elementary education. But a recent plan to amend the RTE act by the Telangana Govt. may lead to closing down of about 12000 schools in the state. What is the amendment and what could be the reasons and the consequences of the planned amendment? Let’s try and find out.
To understand the proposed amendment by the Telangana Govt. First, we need to understand a certain section of the act which talks about access to education.
Section 6 of the RTE Act mentions that the schools must be accessible to the children. The provision acknowledges that even if the children are enrolled in the school, they might not be able to complete their education based on the distance between their residence and the location of the school.
Even though the Act does not specifically mention any particular distance for the location of the school from a locality, it does talk about the principle of providing “neighbourhood” schools by the state governments. These neighbourhood schools need to be easily within the reach of the targeted kids in the area.
The distance has been left for the local governments to decide given the variety of the nature of the physical makeup of the country from high altitudes in the mountains to the coastal areas.
However, the Central Government has attempted to exemplify this in the Model RTE Rules circulated to States, which provide for distance norms of one kilometre for children in classes I-V, and three kilometres for children in classes VI-VIII and five kilometres for high school students.
The Telangana Govt. is planning to change this distance norm in the act by increasing the distance to 5km for primary, secondary and high schools altogether.
If the Govt. is successful in doing that what could be the possible consequences of the amendment?
This could lead to shutting down of a lot of primary and secondary schools which will, in turn, affect the accessibility to schools as mentioned in section 3. It could lead to clubbing of various schools together which might, in turn, lead to loss of jobs for the teachers working in these schools.
Now, the question arises why the Govt. is doing it?
From the Govt’s perspective, this could lead to a better management and training required for the teachers. It might help in focusing its efforts on less number of schools and thus, in turn, improving their condition. Hence, the importance of quality over quantity seems to be the primary reason behind this decision.
Also, Hyderabad district education officer (DEO), B Venkata Narassamma said “While we have been asked to take distance as the main parameter to define neighbourhood schools, in urban areas, schools are established based on need, not distance. So, we might also have to consider enrolment. We will get a clear picture only after our first meeting,”
He is part of the six-member committee formed by the state government to look into the possible impacts of the amendment and submit a detailed report.
On the other hand, Teachers, student organisations, and parents claim the government is looking for ways to shut down government schools to help private and corporate schools.
Telangana Teachers Federation president, E Raghunandan commented on this
“Earlier they tried to close schools in the name of rationalisation and re-location. Now it is by amending RTE Act. Instead, the government should concentrate on providing basic facilities in the schools and recruit teachers,”
Given the arguments on both the sides, it is a tough choice to make and it raises some important questions. Is shutting the schools down the right way to bring up the quality of education? Does the factor of distance and the idea of neighbourhood schools mentioned in the RTE act amount to a reasonable argument?
Although points can be made from both the sides, the basic idea of the right to education is to provide free and accessible education and it is most important at the primary level. Children studying in the classes 1-5 are the foremost beneficiaries of this act. And they are also the ones who are most unlikely to travel to long distances of up to 5km for schooling. Therefore, any amendment, for whatever reasons, needs to be looked at from their perspective before being implemented.
