RTE Judgement: Government shirks responsibility?

Originally posted by: tannipartner

A recent Supreme Court of India judgement upheld the right to education by making it mandatory for all government aided and private schools, except for minority schools and hostels, to reserve 25% of the seats for the poor students.Those which have day scholars and hostels must reserve 25% of the seats of the day scholars. this is limited from class 1 to class 8.

At the first instance it seems like a wonderful idea to make sure equal distribution of knowledge, to end the inequality in the education. But this quick fix solution seems to have far reaching implications.

The Goverment will provide private schools a fixed amount of money for each such intake. However it is not clear how much money should be given for each student.

It was said that the government would pay to the schools on behalf of the students..as in subsidiaries. By governement here, I mean the state government and local bodies...ofcourse the funding would be the responsibility of Central Govt.

Does this mean the Government is trying to shirk its responsibility by shifting it towards the shoulders of the private and aided schools and just acting like the man with the gun. The news i read, had far too many new restrictions imposed upon the private schools like for example ,the school cannot fail or expel the students as right to education is a fundamental one. Evaluation should be done in a continuous gradual evolution process, whatever that may mean.😕 How is the evaluation even possible if there is no pass or fail for students? The goverment primary school in our locality has no pass or fail, so a class 4 pass kid cannot do 8*9.

IKR 😆 .. The govt. sometimes doesnt make itself clear :/ ..why educate any student when they cannot be told about their poor performance?? what's the purpose of education. And what will be the difference between a hardworking student and a benchwarmer? But...since it's only till class 8, I guess it wont affect the students in their 10th and 12th grades, as those classes are more important and actually matter in one's education.

This whole judgement seems farcical.

First of all, if and the when the goverment provides a flat sum of money, its highly unlikely that this will recover the cost of those 25 out of 100 students. the private schools would recover it by increasing tution fees of the other 75 students ie their parents have to pay it. So basically the axe again falls on the middle and upper middle class families who already pay education tax, cess tax and 10,000 other different taxes.

Even if forcefully these students of less advantaged class are introduced in the class, it is almost given they will face different sorts of disparity, their parents shall not have the means to give them private tution or coaching and other means of guidence which relatively well off parents can give. How are they going to survive?

Exactly, but then.. I guess we need to wait and see, as the govt is pretty serious about implementing this thing.

By removing pass and fail, it will be impossible to judge who stands where and thereby good hardworking students will loose their moral and enthusiasm for studying.

In a class of 40 students, it is impossible for the teacher to look after each student within that one period of 40 minutes. So blaming or forcing the teacher to do the job will not produce any result. Indian teachers are already overworked and underpaid.

There's actually shortage of some 500000 teachers! They should first recruit the teachers and train them. And also, now, it is mandatory that the teacher shall recieve some good amount..sorry, I forgot the amount :( . If the teachers are going to be paid well, and more teachers are trained and recruited..the implementation of this act would be effective.

Secondly what happens if those 25% seats are not filled because there are not enough students? Those seats go free? IN a country where good educational institutions can be counted in hand, its the students who will stand to lose out, there by increasing the cutthroat competition to the other 75% seats. So the rat race will remain, even more fierce.

Why would the seats go free if the students wont fill in the 25% ??

How can this impact the quality of education. This sounds like just another qouta system. Just to fill up the place, take a more undeserving one over the deserving one. this will just create the problems we have in all spheres of INdian life, only it will be introduced right from childhood.

The child who will gain the seat inspite of lacking merit will learn the early lesson of entitlement: The root of a lot of problems in India.

MERIT. This isnt some IIT or IIM examination..it's just primary education, and they're little children.. what do they know about "competition", they're there to study and gain knowledge. Sure they do compete for ranks WITHIN the class. Plus, it is said that they cannot FAIL any student, but the passing students would be studying for his scores? Plus, isnt grade system implemented in CBSE schools? Actual competition based on MERIT starts after 10th grade(when one writes board exams) and when yor looking for colleges, admissions etc. This act applies to students studying in classes 1-8. What merit does a 6th grade boy need? All he has to do is sit and study, gain knowledge and give his best in annual exams set by his own school.

What is the stand of government on this? Right to education is a fundamental right and its the duty of the govermnent to provide it, arrange for it, not to fire its guns from the shoulder of other people.

Government school teachers are some of the highly qualified teaching professionals in India.

You got this totally opposite .. The teachers in government schools EXCLUSIVELY, are under-qualified 😃 The teachers need to be trained..and the givt. did say they're gonna train teachers, have a new examinaton or something for their recruitment and all.. lets see what they're gonna do with teachers. I wonder how the shortage of 500,000 teachers is gonna be handled?

But the infrastructure lacks a lot. a primary school teacher in rural region worries less about teaching the students and more about how to bring them to school and distribute them mid day meals.

Infrastructure IS a major problem besides shortage of qualified teachers :( ..Most govt schools are in such a pathetic condition, I get tears when I see poor children in such buildings, and sometimes, they're taught under sheds! There are hundreds of schools in each state of India that lack infrastucture, I really want to see how the state and central govt.s are gonna improve the infrastructure.

Although mid-day meals incentive has been implemented, there are so many poor students not attending the schools! In a way, mid-day meals thingy has failed and has been a success because , once again, there are quite a number of children who attend the school. Now, lets hope the ones wh**e attending the school only for mid-day meals are actually gaining some knowledge and are studying

Is it not the job of the goverment to provide consciousness, make sure the children go to school?

Look, one cannot blame the government for every single thing. You can take a horse to the river, and even push it's head into the water, but it has to make an effort to drink the water. Govt is doing it's job of making people aware, alluring them with mid-day meals too! but it's the people drowning in poverty who cannot realise it(the value of education).

A poor father would be enraged to see his child "wasting time" in schools and not making money(which is immediate gain to him).. while he has a whole family to feed and stuff. Why do you think there are so many drop-outs in schools? People should realise too. Awareness must be spread. Or else, to make sure they go to school..strict actions should be taken against parents who let their children not attend schools...that's the only solution I can think of, but it sounds really authoritarianistic to me. 🤔

Maintain the school buildings. The money it plans to pay to the private and aided schools can prolly be used in it.

Is the Indian goverment turning lazy and shirking its responsibility?

It is slow-paced, but it definately isnt shirking off the responsiblity.. that isnt even possible in a democratic country.

Does this Judgement create more problems than it solved?

I dont think this act causes any problems, if it's implemented in the way it has to be, there would be HELLA improvement.. Atleast infrastructure and training of teachers should be done. Atleast by 80% . And, the govt should subsidize as promised to the schools. Now, the students studying or not, filling up the seats or not, depends on the students..

Originally posted by: Angel-likeDevil

Originally posted by: tannipartner

Thanks a lot for your replies, atleast someone replied 😃

I guess we're the only two people on this forum who live in India 😆 I am so happy to have found a person living in India who can make topics on things going on in India 😃

Originally posted by: Angel-likeDevil