RTE Act will take 3 more years to show results, says Sibal
Faced with teacher shortage and other infrastructural hurdles,
the government has said the ambitious Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education
(RTE) Act will take at least three more years to show results.
"It (RTE Act) is going to take three years at least. This is not something that
is going to bear fruit tomorrow," Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal said. Many hurdles
have to be overcome for effective implementation of the Act as the states don't
have the necessary "wherewithal and infrastructure", he said.
The Act provides for free and compulsory education to all children in the age group
of 6-14 years. Recently, some states had approached the ministry seeking relaxation
of teacher qualification norms under the Act due to shortage of teacher training
institutes.
Section 23(2) of the RTE Act provides a time frame of five years for ensuring that
all teachers in elementary school are trained and within this period they need to
acquire professional qualification. At a meeting of the state education ministers
here on June 8, it came into light that there are over 7 lakh untrained teachers
in the country, the largest number of them are in Bihar, followed by Uttar Pradesh,
Jharkhand and West Bengal.
Moreover, of the total number of untrained teachers, around 5.48 lakh are at primary
level and 2.25 lakh at upper primary level.
Sibal, however, said the feedback received about the willingness of the states to
implement the Act has been "very positive".
Till now, 18 states have notified the Act which came into force from April
last year and only 14 of them have constituted the state commission for protection
of child rights as per the provisions of the Act. The role of state commission is
to examine and review safeguards for ensuring rights of the children. Some states
have also sought a revision of the funding norms citing budgetary constraints. While
Bihar suggested raising the Centre's contribution from 65%to 90, Chhattisgarh demanded
it should be revised in the ratio of 75:25 instead of 65:35. Uttar Pradesh education
minister R. Tripathi had said his "state is yet to get the Centre's share for implementing
RTE".
Courtesy: DNA India
