.
Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009
The Bill is a progressive legislation and I welcome the resolve of our government to ensure that every child in our country gets free and compulsory education upto elementary level. We cannot however divide education and learning into water tight levels and neglect pre-school (0-6) or secondary (14-18) education. All these stages are a continuum. It is established by many studies that if a child receives good pre school education, chances of her continuing in primary education are enhanced as her base at the entry level gets strengthened. Similarly now for any youth to get meaningful employment education upto high school is a minimum requirement. I would, therefore urge the government to enhance the resource allocations for pre school and secondary education so that we can universalise these stages in the current five year plan. The areas of serious concern are quality and financial implications.
As regards the provisions of the Bill, I feel the success of our endeavour will depend on how we can make teachers accountable to the students and parents. The learning levels of majority of students in the elementary education are very unsatisfactory as is seen from the annual data collected through the District Information System on Education (DISE) by NUEPA and ASER in 2006-07. In an evaluation conducted by the Education Department of Maharashtra, in 2005, a staggering number of 8 lakh students in standard 4th could not read or write simple sentences. The NCERT survey of Standard V carried out in 2007 indicates that only about 45.2% students can comprehend a story and 19.27% children score zero marks out of 5 in writing descriptive answers. Only 28-30% children score 4 or 5 marks out of 5 in simple descriptive questions. Only about 38.2% children can solve a simple fraction problem.
| << Back |
