Bihar's RTE Dilemma

Background

The Right to Education Act, 2009 is a path-breaking piece of legislation that has widespread ramifications on the primary education delivery system. This Act will come into force on the first day of April, 2010. The Act calls for a substantial reworking and remodelling of the institutions and procedures at State level, as well as for the framing of rules under the Act that will ensure Primary Education coverage for every child in the state.

Objective

In order to effectively formulate the State Rules under the Act, a series of consultations have been organised by the Bihar Education Project Council with national experts, state implementation partners and decision makers and stakeholders.

The first consultation was held at State level on 18th and 19th February 2010 at Hotel Patliputra Ashok, Patna.



Mr Anjani Kumar Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Human Resource Development introduced the aims and objectives of the Consultation.

Addressing the stakeholders present, he pointed out that the Act was an ambitious one, specifically in the context of Bihar. He stated that in the past decade and a half, the kind of development expected on the elementary education front didn’t happen due to multifarious reasons.

“We can see that, in respect to other states, our state was quite backward in student-teacher ratio, school rooms, quality, teacher training, and facilities for disabled children. In the past three to four years, we have taken some measures which have resulted in the improvement of the situation to a small extent, but the ideal platform for us to launch such an ambitious Act does not exist at present,” he said.

The RTE Act had already been passed and was expected to come into force on the first of April. Bihar would have to do a lot, and do a lot of new things to implement the provisions of the Act.

The Principal Secretary HRD urged the participants to examine the ramifications of the Act carefully and try to come up with solutions. He highlighted some of the challenges.

Parameters have changed a lot. For example it was quite difficult to bring the teacher-student ratio to 40:1. In the recent past, the government had appointed more than two lakh teachers, but even more teachers need to be appointed to attain that standard. If, in conformity with the Act, the ratio is made to 30:1, the question would be from where would three lakh teachers come? The Act calls for trained teachers, where would these teachers come from, he asked.

[The Act stipulates that EVERY child betweeen 6 and 14 MUST access school Compulsorily, and the STATE shall ensure this as the Act comes into force April 2010 ]

There are different categories of teachers at present, but under the Act all teachers would have to be trained and meet a nationally determined standard.

Stressing on the fact that the law had been passed and that there was no room to debate the provisions of the Act, he said that the Model Rules were a guideline along which individual states would frame the rules taking into consideration the local conditions, possibilities, and constraints.

He drew attention to the existence of implementation time frames within the Act, and asked the participants to deliberate on the ways and strategies that could be used to handle these time frames.

The Act calls for all schools to be registered with the Government, and the good thing about this would be that a minimum standard would have to be maintained in all schools. If these minimum standards were not maintained, then the schools would have their registration cancelled. He pointed out that there was a danger of harassment for private schools and complications in this context, and stresses the importance of evolving a system whereby implementation would be smooth and transparent.

It would be necessary to prioritise the areas of implementation, taking into consideration the priorities in the State. A workable time frame for the implementation of each aspect would have to be worked out.

One of the major challenges would be the fiscal aspect. Financial resources and allocation for different components would present a challenge.

He pointed out that currently education spending was about 15 percent over the budget allocation. The implementation of the new Act would weigh heavily on the state exchequer, and the challenge would be mobilising resources to meet the projected expenditure of approximately Rs 28,000 crore. He mentioned that even the developed states were finding it difficult to muster the resources required to implement the RTE act, and that it was generally felt that the Centre should contribute towards 90 percent of the resources required for implementation.

Mr Anjani Kumar urged the participants to come up with an implementable road map taking into consideration the ground realities of the State. He said that even though the issues thrown up by the RTE looked huge, it was not a time to be disheartened.

He said that the participants present represented a wide range: NGOs and pressure groups for educational reform, private schools, and stakeholders and it was his belief that the two day consultation would throw up useful recommendations that would help in a viable and priority based implementation road-map for Bihar.


Author: Frank Krishner
Frank Krishner documents several educational initiatives for UNICEF, the State Government agencies, and other International Organisations. This post and subsequent ones on the consultation are for the purpose of general awareness and for the response of the enlightened public.