Date:08/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/08/stories/2008100855351300.htm

National

Group of Ministers clears compulsory education Bill

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Group of Ministers (GoM) – entrusted with the task of scrutinizing the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008 (RTE) – cleared the draft legislation on Tuesday. The Bill is expected to be put up for Cabinet clearance next week.

Barring a few changes to the language of the draft legislation, the GoM has cleared the Bill without diluting its content including some of the contentious provisions like 25 per cent reservation in private schools for disadvantaged children from the neighbourhood at the entry level.

The Bill was referred to the GoM on August 8 after the Cabinet took it up in the absence of Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Arjun Singh. Besides Mr. Singh, other members were Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Union Minister for Science & Technology Kapil Sibal – who drafted one of the earliest incarnates of the Bill – and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. .

Another issue that the HRD Ministry feared would run into trouble pertains to the penal action prescribed in case schools conduct admission tests or any other screening procedure. Similarly, there is a bar on charging capitation fees. Equally contentious is the provision for having a School Management Committee in every school to make parents and the community stakeholders in the school. Since the RTE is aimed at standardizing elementary education and is billed as a first step towards a common school system, these provisions will be equally applicable to government and private schools; resulting in the private school lobby making concerted efforts to dilute the Bill.

The Bill – required to operationalise the Fundamental Right to Education enacted in 2002 – has been in the making since. As per the Ministry’s estimates, enacting the legislation would require an additional allocation of Rs. 12,000 crore annually during the remaining years of the XI Five Year Plan as the balance requirement would be met from the funding for Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan – the ongoing mission-mode programme to universalise elementary education.