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What it means
- Free elementary education
- Neighbourhood schools
- No capitation fee
- No child to be denied admission
- No child to be expelled
- No non-teaching work to teachers
- Untrained teachers get chance to upgrade
- Parents to constitute 75% of the members in management committees
- 25 per cent seats in all private schools reserved for disadvantaged sections
- Minimum infrastructure mandated for schools
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New Delhi, August 4
Sixty-two years after Independence, India today formally committed itself to providing free and compulsory elementary education to children aged 6 to 14 years, with the Lok Sabha passing the Right of Children to free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009. The Rajya Sabha had already passed the bill, which was introduced last December by the then Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh.
Passage of the Bill by LS today paves the way for the Centre to notify the 86th Constitutional amendment passed in December 2002 to guarantee, by law, the right of children to elementary education, to be provided free of cost.
Every state government would now have to compulsorily define and set up neighbourhood schools to educate every child aged six to 14 years. For this, the states will receive financial assistance from the Centre. The Centre has left it to states to define “disadvantaged groups”, mandating the inclusion of disabled children in this category.
The law now puts the onus on states to notify its historic requirements - no child can be expelled from school or be put through any exam, not even class V and VIII boards, no child can be denied admission to any school for lack of birth or transfer certificate; no child can be expelled from school, no capitation fee can be charged. Also, the states will have to ensure no non-teaching work is given to teachers and quality teachers are recruited; untrained teachers would have to upgrade themselves in five years.
For the first time, quality of schools has been mandated under law, with the government listing minimum infrastructure requirements on the part of schools. It has asked the states to identify schools that don’t conform, asking them to do so in three years or face de-recognition.
HRD Minister Kapil Sibal dismissed opposition accusations that the UPA was in a hurry to enact the law. “I was hoping you would say we are late. It was 16 years ago that the SC
made free and compulsory education a fundamental right of children and it was in 1937 that Mahatma Gandhi talked about universal elementary education,” said the minister.
“This law is a national enterprise. It is not about you or me; it is about us. I seek the cooperation of states in implementing it to ensure that no child is denied education for want of finances,” Sibal said.
Though passed with a full majority, the Bill was heatedly debated today, with MIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi alleging that the Act was against the Constitution that exempted minority institutions from providing quotas for others. Sibal, however, said even minority schools would have to reserve 25 per cent seats for the disadvantaged children, and the same was fully consistent with Article 30 of the Constitution.
