The Right To Education (RTE) Act has been envisioned to provide free and compulsory education to all children. However, most teachers' unions says the norms laid down in RTE may very well shut down around three lakh schools across the country.
President of All India Secondary Teachers Federation (AISTF) Feroz Badshah said, "The AISTF and a couple of other major pan-India unions are in dialogue with the government over their concerns. The AISTF itself is a 10-lakh member strong union spread across 21 states."
Badshah said, "There are norms in RTE for various things, such as school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio etc. In a country like India, education funding is already a problem. It is estimated that there are more than three lakh low-budget schools in the cities, where the fee ranges from Rs 100 to Rs 300. Over nine crore middle-class children study in these schools up to the secondary level. If the norms and standards of RTE are to be implemented effectively, all these schools will have to be closed down."
Citing an example, Badshah said that under RTE schools need to have minimum requirements of building. Each classroom should have play material and equipment for games and sports. Each school should also have a library with newspapers, magazines and books on all subjects and the building should be 'all-weather construction'. There needs to be a separate kitchen for cooking midday meals, along with a boundary wall and playground for each school.
Badshah says, "Many schools in India do not have any sports equipments, so providing that to every classroom is almost next to impossible. There are no libraries in many schools and midday meals are being cooked in the same premises at a lot of places."
As for all-weather buildings, many schools in rural India and even a few in cities don't even have a concrete slab, but make do with roof tiles. The teachers' unions feel the government will have to increase the allocation in the budget to realistically implement the RTE.
Rampal Singh, president of All India Primary Teachers Federation (AIPTF), said, "The Indian government would have to raise the education budget to 6% of the GDP. We are being underfunded presently, and with RTE, it will be very difficult."
Apart from infrastructure, the teachers' unions also said that meeting norms for student-teacher ratio and training for teachers would not be easy to implement.
President of All India Secondary Teachers Federation (AISTF) Feroz Badshah said, "The AISTF and a couple of other major pan-India unions are in dialogue with the government over their concerns. The AISTF itself is a 10-lakh member strong union spread across 21 states."
Badshah said, "There are norms in RTE for various things, such as school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio etc. In a country like India, education funding is already a problem. It is estimated that there are more than three lakh low-budget schools in the cities, where the fee ranges from Rs 100 to Rs 300. Over nine crore middle-class children study in these schools up to the secondary level. If the norms and standards of RTE are to be implemented effectively, all these schools will have to be closed down."
Citing an example, Badshah said that under RTE schools need to have minimum requirements of building. Each classroom should have play material and equipment for games and sports. Each school should also have a library with newspapers, magazines and books on all subjects and the building should be 'all-weather construction'. There needs to be a separate kitchen for cooking midday meals, along with a boundary wall and playground for each school.
Badshah says, "Many schools in India do not have any sports equipments, so providing that to every classroom is almost next to impossible. There are no libraries in many schools and midday meals are being cooked in the same premises at a lot of places."
As for all-weather buildings, many schools in rural India and even a few in cities don't even have a concrete slab, but make do with roof tiles. The teachers' unions feel the government will have to increase the allocation in the budget to realistically implement the RTE.
Rampal Singh, president of All India Primary Teachers Federation (AIPTF), said, "The Indian government would have to raise the education budget to 6% of the GDP. We are being underfunded presently, and with RTE, it will be very difficult."
Apart from infrastructure, the teachers' unions also said that meeting norms for student-teacher ratio and training for teachers would not be easy to implement.
No comments:
Post a Comment