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12,000 Schools May Shut Down as Telangana Govt. Plans to Amend the RTE Act

The Right to Education Act or RTE provides to every child from the age of six to fourteen years the right to free and compulsory education in a neighbourhood school until the completion of elementary education. But a recent plan to amend the RTE act by the Telangana Govt. may lead to closing down of about 12000 schools in the state. What is the amendment and what could be the reasons and the consequences of the planned amendment? Let&rsquo;s try and find out.
To understand the proposed amendment by the Telangana Govt. First, we need to understand a certain section of the act which talks about access to education.
Section 6 of the RTE Act mentions that the schools must be accessible to the children. The provision acknowledges that even if the children are enrolled in the school, they might not be able to complete their education based on the distance between their residence and the location of the school.
Even though the Act does not specifically mention any particular distance for the location of the school from a locality, it does talk about the principle of providing &ldquo;neighbourhood&rdquo; schools by the state governments. These neighbourhood schools need to be easily within the reach of the targeted kids in the area.
The distance has been left for the local governments to decide given the variety of the nature of the physical makeup of the country from high altitudes in the mountains to the coastal areas.&nbsp;
However, the Central Government has attempted to exemplify this in the Model RTE Rules circulated to States, which provide for distance norms of one kilometre for children in classes I-V, and three kilometres for children in classes VI-VIII and five kilometres for high school students.
The Telangana Govt. is planning to change this distance norm in the act by increasing the distance to 5km for primary, secondary and high schools altogether.&nbsp;
If the Govt. is successful in doing that what could be the possible consequences of the amendment?
This could lead to shutting down of a lot of primary and secondary schools which will, in turn, affect the accessibility to schools as mentioned in section 3. It could lead to clubbing of various schools together which might, in turn, lead to loss of jobs for the teachers working in these schools.
Now, the question arises why the Govt. is doing it?
From the Govt&rsquo;s perspective, this could lead to a better management and training required for the teachers. It might help in focusing its efforts on less number of schools and thus, in turn, improving their condition. Hence, the importance of quality over quantity seems to be the primary reason behind this decision.
Also, Hyderabad district education officer (DEO), B Venkata Narassamma said &ldquo;While we have been asked to take distance as the main parameter to define neighbourhood schools, in urban areas, schools are established based on need, not distance. So, we might also have to consider enrolment. We will get a clear picture only after our first meeting,&rdquo;&nbsp;
He is part of the six-member committee formed by the state government to look into the possible impacts of the amendment and submit a detailed report.
On the other hand, Teachers, student organisations, and parents claim the government is looking for ways to shut down government schools to help private and corporate schools.
Telangana Teachers Federation president, E Raghunandan commented on this
&ldquo;Earlier they tried to close schools in the name of rationalisation and re-location. Now it is by amending RTE Act. Instead, the government should concentrate on providing basic facilities in the schools and recruit teachers,&rdquo;
Given the arguments on both the sides, it is a tough choice to make and it raises some important questions. Is shutting the schools down the right way to bring up the quality of education? Does the factor of distance and the idea of neighbourhood schools mentioned in the RTE act amount to a reasonable argument?
Although points can be made from both the sides, the basic idea of the right to education is to provide free and accessible education and it is most important at the primary level. Children studying in the classes 1-5 are the foremost beneficiaries of this act. And they are also the ones who are most unlikely to travel to long distances of up to&nbsp;5km for schooling. Therefore, any amendment, for whatever reasons, needs to be looked at from their perspective before being implemented.

Reforming India: Introducing Education Vouchers

Education vouchers.
What is it?
An education voucher is a [Direct Benefit Transfer scheme].&nbsp;
In other words, a voucher is a document promising the user to avail a service and pay for it using the voucher instead of money from their own pockets. In this case, a student will receive a voucher from the government which can then be used to pay the fee of the school. The school can then use the voucher and receive the amount it promises from the government. Say the fee is 800 rupees a month and the voucher is worth 500 rupees. The parents can then use this voucher, add three hundred more, and can send the child to the better school.
Why an education voucher?
Article 26 of the UN Declaration, states that parents have the primary rights over a child&rsquo;s education, and so, they should be given more control and choice over how and where the child receives her education. A [voucher] can play a really effective role here.
It provides the parent more [choice] of where they want to send their child to study. They can choose a school that is either near or far from them, a school with a different language of instruction, or simply any school they think will benefit their child.
A voucher will also motivate the school to perform better on how well they can retain its students. Public schools will have to up their level. We&rsquo;re talking about an overhaul of the current system. Since the income of the school depends on the number of vouchers they receive, they will have to provide better service and infrastructure to make sure they can attract and retain students.
It will lead to a healthy competition between schools to be better service providers because their income is not dependent on government grant or subsidy bo compete with the private schools and this will in turn, ideally raise the overall standard of education.
Private education has largely been a monopoly of the financially strong, which stops the weaker sections of the society from accessing it. Despite provisions of reservations, there is only so much of the population that can actually avail this opportunity. As such, this circle goes on and the marginalised communities are not able to get out of the rut. A voucher system will ensure that quality education is not restricted to one part of society.
Education vouchers are largely a tried and tested means of bettering the education system. Countries like Bangladesh, Philippines, Sweden have already experimented this method and to good results.
Even in our own country, it has been adopted; although at a minute level. Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, with the support of various organizations and the respective state governments, have already witnessed the benefits of applying this scheme.
It led to an increase in attendance, (10% to 20% shown in figures) since more students were motivated to go to school because they had the economic means and could choose where they wanted to study.
Further, a clear decrease was seen in child labour as more children could fund their education.
Obviously, since its inception, there have been several question marks around its effectiveness. But that does not mean that it is not a good and implementable plan. For all the questions and drawbacks that have been pointed out, there are possible solutions and answers.
1. &nbsp; &nbsp; Can parents actually judge the schools or the suitability of the school for their children?
This stems from a rather biased understanding that parents from the weaker sections of the society who are not educated themselves can judge a school properly.
What has been seen is that, whenever the parents say that the school is good; it generally is.
All the earlier mentioned examples of where vouchers have worked, support this argument.&nbsp;
2. &nbsp; &nbsp; Schools can &ldquo;skim-select&rdquo; the students who will work against social inclusion and won&rsquo;t be an equal opportunity medium for all? It might lead to selecting students from a particular social group or only picking up the ones who are more likely to perform better.
To solve this conundrum, special provisions can be made. Actions against the school for indulging in such an activity is a start. Also, differentiated funding for the EWS (economically weaker sections), Scheduled C, ST, etc where they get a higher value voucher can be done to attract schools to admit students from all strata of the society.
3. &nbsp; &nbsp; Another objection to this scheme is that the learning outcome is not significantly higher.
There are two arguments against this. One that the learning is higher: no matter how small. Any growth, however small, is a sign of progress. Also, in certain aspects such as female education, there has been significant growth.
Secondly, there is no negative impact on outcomes. The system is slightly better but definitely not worse for adopting this plan of action.
4.&nbsp; Some people also confuse this scheme as the privatization of education and propose that this will affect the public education system.
To answer that, we must remember that the aim of the scheme is to improve the quality of education, whatever the source is. Also, it has been observed that private schools have come up and continue to do so even in areas which don&rsquo;t have public schools. This scheme does not promote building new schools but bettering the existing ones and make them more accountable, regardless of whether they are public or private.
Education, as a system, needs to evolve with the times. A voucher system is the need of the hour where the conventional subsidy system has failed to impress. With solid data backing the proposal of such a scheme, it is undoubtedly a step the government must take to ensure a [better, educated India].&nbsp;

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