Summary

The writer is critical in this article on right to education act 2009 (RTE). The act is to ensure that
education is basic right of every child of the country. The act enforces two main things that every
school should have minimum infrastructure available and there should be trained teachers in
each school. The other interesting thing of the act is that, it is mandatory for the private schools
to reserve 25% of seats for the under privileged children. There are many schools of thoughts on
these points in the act. The supporters, which include NGOs, activists and foundations, think that
through RTE act we can make government accountable for the education of children. The critics
of the RTE act think that this act focuses on infrastructure more and less on the learning
objective. The writer states that RTE is not the panacea of all wounds for vulnerable children. It
is just putting pressure on government and some compulsions on school machinery. It needs lot
of support for a child from vulnerable society to enroll for school and to maintain continuous
learning in schools and motivation for education in future for a child. There are many reasons
because of which children dropped the schools in between like migration, need of labour during
agriculture cycles, illness etc. The writer gives some hard statistics which force us to ponder on
the implementation of act. These facts includes that only 49% of schools have functional toilets,
only 43% of schools have electricity, only 15% of schools have functional computer in this
digital India. The writer also points some complex problems in retention of children in private
schools within that 25% reserved seats. The problems are like tough curriculum, language etc.
The admission process of such private schools is itself very tough and after admission also there
are various problems with the children. The law provides relaxation for only tuition fees and the
other part of fees is itself a big amount to pay for such poor parents. The writer also points many
challenges to improve the condition of government schools and lack of trained teachers but
though he believes that RTE is one ray of hope in between of all problems. In conclusion writer
says that the current RTE act if implemented properly will help in reducing the heterogeneity in
schooling system. The government school infrastructure is being upgraded and the situation of
cheaper private school is still not much clear. But the one thing is sure now that education for
disadvantage children has many challenges ahead. It requires lot more efforts in regard to
improve the root learning of the children. It needs to heed our attention towards the curriculum,
textbooks, trained teachers, language etc.

Opinion on the article

The article is a critical one on the RTE act 2009. The major issues which it analyzes are the need
of infrastructure and trained teachers in government schools and the law which mandate 25% of
the seats to be reserved for under privileged students by private schools. It is a good article
stating various schools of thoughts on the issue. It also states the arguments of the proponents
and opponents of the rule 25% reservation point. Article gives views of various stakeholder

involved in the issue. The article gives me a good food for thought on the RTE act 2009 and the
challenges in implementation of rules to mandate government schools for basic infrastructure
and 25% reserved seats in private schools. It gives some information about the ambiguity of role
of cheap private schools in the act. The article is a good article which gives a good overview of
RTE act 2009 and critically analyse few important point of the act. In my view the writer should
also include some roadmap to implement the act and should also have given some international
example which we can refer.

Opinion on the issue

In my personal view RTE is a very big step to make state accountable for the education of
children but the approach is not right. The government should fund more primary education
rather than higher education. The gap between government schools and private schools should be
diminished. We can follow the South Korea model where they invest in primary education a lot
and made it compulsory for all to study in only government schools. It is very unfortunate that
after this many years of independence we are still thinking of only basic facility in government
schools, instead of that we should now think about quality education and quality infrastructure in
government schools. The 25% reservation in private schools for disadvantage children is itself
very difficult to implement. At the end of 2015 admission season, of the 22.9 lakh seats available
under the 25% quota for socially and economically disadvantage children, only 3.46 lakh (15%)
were filled. The parents of such children are so marginalized that first they will not be able to get
information about such rule and second it will be very difficult for them to get admission and
maintain admission of their students in such schools. On the other hand in a free society this rule
is actually a burden on private schools. So in my view government should make their schools
like in such a way that children from all section of society want to admit in government schools.