By Naba Kishor Pujari
1st April, 2013 marked the 3 years of RTE Act implementation in our country as our Prime Minister handed over Right to Education Act 2009 on 1st April 2010. It is mentioned in the Act that all the norms and standards of RTE Act will be fulfilled within 3 years of the commencement of the Act. March 31, 2013 is the deadline of fulfilling all the norms. But, free, compulsory and quality elementary educations for every child in public schools have not been fulfilled. Fortunately, Odisha was the second state after Sikkim to form rules on RTE Act but flaws and lopsided implementation has stood far from the desired targets. As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2012, 96 percent of all children in the 6 to 14 years age group in rural Odisha were enrolled in schools out of which 89.6 percent enrolled in public schools. As per the Section 12 of RTE Act, the school and Mass Education Department has ordered an issue to all private unaided schools to admit at least 25 percent of its entry level class from children belonging to economically weaker section but this has gone wallow as there is no system to reimburse the school fees charged by the schools yet. Issues of teachers The issues of teachers in our state are very grim. The state has over 35928 primary schools and 20427 upper primary schools. Out of the total teacher strength of 167948, 79715 no. of teachers are either Sikshya sahayaka or Ganasikshaka. The recent phenomenon of recruiting contractual teachers instead of regular teachers has badly affected classroom teaching. The salaries of the contractual teachers are generally a fraction of the salary of regular teachers. Around 7000 elementary schools of our state is run by a single teacher. As a fall out, teachers are demonstrating protests throughout the year. Teachers’ absenteeism is also a major cause which affects teaching in classrooms. Again, the school is a dream for 4560 villages in our state. Odisha is a tribal dominated state. There are 11 primitive tribal groups who have no access to other language except their local dialects. A high level committee of the state Government had decided to make available text books and create teachers post in tribal languages in order to mainstream them into schools, but this has not been given due weight age for the reason best known to them. Status of the state as per the RTE Compliance According to the data revealed by the Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA), Odisha has been lagging behind from being an RTE Compliant state. 13 percent of school classrooms, 66 percent in girl’s toilet in schools, 46 percent in building ramp, 74 percent in opening a library in schools and 66 percent in building boundary wall have not been complied with RTE Norms in elementary level. In order to fulfill the needs of teacher as per the norms, the state has to fill up the vacancy of around 13000 teachers in schools. Budgetary allocation and spending In 2012-13, there was an allocation of 6525.40 crore rupees for Education in the state which has been increased to 71442.83 crore in 2013-14 fiscal budget. But if we compare the increase with the inflation and increased share of child populations in a year, the increase is not hopeful. There is under utilization of SSA funds. While 2680 crore was allocated for SSA, only 50 percent has been spent till December 2012. Last year, an allocation of Rs. 94.43 lakh was made for school libraries; only 28.70 percent of their funds have been spent. While 80.61 crore was allocated under Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya(KGBV), our state has been able to spend only23.72 crore. The percentage of fund utilization till December 2012 is 83.7percent with respect to fund available and 49.99 percent with respected to Annual Work plan and Budget. In the field of Infrastructure, 51.80 percent of fund has been utilized and 67.95 percent of fund utilization has been witnessed in text book supply. Similarly, the government’s target was to provide drinking water facilities to 5972 schools last year but not even a single school had been provided drinking water facilities till January 2013. Therefore, under utilization and lack of monitoring mechanism has given birth to a huge gap between budgeted expenditure and actual spending in education. Challenges and loopholes Despite some little initiatives taken in our state to perk up the standard of elementary education, there are bags of challenges ahead to tackle with if education is really to see its step up. Quality learning at classrooms in public schools is in awful. Knowledge on basic arithmetic, numeric counting, class wise learning capacity of school children in our state is very scary. The institutional support mechanism and policy reform has not been addressed properly, because there should be a State level advisory committee on education which is not yet formed. In order to tackle the problems of child labor, juvenile in conflict with laws, street children, there must be a convergence to monitor these issues and mainstream the deprived children into schools. The state government has not yet defined out of school children in the RTE Rules which means the government does not want to stress out of school and never enrolled children. School Management Committee and local authority had been seen as tools for school governance in RTE Act but their performance is not yet agreeable for effective school management and bringing children into schools respectively. Therefore, the state government must make necessary arrangement to ensure their actual participation in school management. The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) has been formed to protect the children against violation of their rights but the performance of the SCPCR is very off-putting. The state government has no solid data on the number of child labourers as there is no survey undertaken on child labor after 1997. Odisha has ranked one in missing children cases in India which is a major issue of concern. Looking at these inefficiencies, can we say that RTE Act has really been turned out to be a justiciable right for the children? - See more at: http://www.orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=40495#sthash.9raaqavo.dpuf
1st April, 2013 marked the 3 years of RTE Act implementation in our country as our Prime Minister handed over Right to Education Act 2009 on 1st April 2010. It is mentioned in the Act that all the norms and standards of RTE Act will be fulfilled within 3 years of the commencement of the Act. March 31, 2013 is the deadline of fulfilling all the norms. But, free, compulsory and quality elementary educations for every child in public schools have not been fulfilled. Fortunately, Odisha was the second state after Sikkim to form rules on RTE Act but flaws and lopsided implementation has stood far from the desired targets. As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2012, 96 percent of all children in the 6 to 14 years age group in rural Odisha were enrolled in schools out of which 89.6 percent enrolled in public schools. As per the Section 12 of RTE Act, the school and Mass Education Department has ordered an issue to all private unaided schools to admit at least 25 percent of its entry level class from children belonging to economically weaker section but this has gone wallow as there is no system to reimburse the school fees charged by the schools yet. Issues of teachers The issues of teachers in our state are very grim. The state has over 35928 primary schools and 20427 upper primary schools. Out of the total teacher strength of 167948, 79715 no. of teachers are either Sikshya sahayaka or Ganasikshaka. The recent phenomenon of recruiting contractual teachers instead of regular teachers has badly affected classroom teaching. The salaries of the contractual teachers are generally a fraction of the salary of regular teachers. Around 7000 elementary schools of our state is run by a single teacher. As a fall out, teachers are demonstrating protests throughout the year. Teachers’ absenteeism is also a major cause which affects teaching in classrooms. Again, the school is a dream for 4560 villages in our state. Odisha is a tribal dominated state. There are 11 primitive tribal groups who have no access to other language except their local dialects. A high level committee of the state Government had decided to make available text books and create teachers post in tribal languages in order to mainstream them into schools, but this has not been given due weight age for the reason best known to them. Status of the state as per the RTE Compliance According to the data revealed by the Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA), Odisha has been lagging behind from being an RTE Compliant state. 13 percent of school classrooms, 66 percent in girl’s toilet in schools, 46 percent in building ramp, 74 percent in opening a library in schools and 66 percent in building boundary wall have not been complied with RTE Norms in elementary level. In order to fulfill the needs of teacher as per the norms, the state has to fill up the vacancy of around 13000 teachers in schools. Budgetary allocation and spending In 2012-13, there was an allocation of 6525.40 crore rupees for Education in the state which has been increased to 71442.83 crore in 2013-14 fiscal budget. But if we compare the increase with the inflation and increased share of child populations in a year, the increase is not hopeful. There is under utilization of SSA funds. While 2680 crore was allocated for SSA, only 50 percent has been spent till December 2012. Last year, an allocation of Rs. 94.43 lakh was made for school libraries; only 28.70 percent of their funds have been spent. While 80.61 crore was allocated under Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya(KGBV), our state has been able to spend only23.72 crore. The percentage of fund utilization till December 2012 is 83.7percent with respect to fund available and 49.99 percent with respected to Annual Work plan and Budget. In the field of Infrastructure, 51.80 percent of fund has been utilized and 67.95 percent of fund utilization has been witnessed in text book supply. Similarly, the government’s target was to provide drinking water facilities to 5972 schools last year but not even a single school had been provided drinking water facilities till January 2013. Therefore, under utilization and lack of monitoring mechanism has given birth to a huge gap between budgeted expenditure and actual spending in education. Challenges and loopholes Despite some little initiatives taken in our state to perk up the standard of elementary education, there are bags of challenges ahead to tackle with if education is really to see its step up. Quality learning at classrooms in public schools is in awful. Knowledge on basic arithmetic, numeric counting, class wise learning capacity of school children in our state is very scary. The institutional support mechanism and policy reform has not been addressed properly, because there should be a State level advisory committee on education which is not yet formed. In order to tackle the problems of child labor, juvenile in conflict with laws, street children, there must be a convergence to monitor these issues and mainstream the deprived children into schools. The state government has not yet defined out of school children in the RTE Rules which means the government does not want to stress out of school and never enrolled children. School Management Committee and local authority had been seen as tools for school governance in RTE Act but their performance is not yet agreeable for effective school management and bringing children into schools respectively. Therefore, the state government must make necessary arrangement to ensure their actual participation in school management. The State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) has been formed to protect the children against violation of their rights but the performance of the SCPCR is very off-putting. The state government has no solid data on the number of child labourers as there is no survey undertaken on child labor after 1997. Odisha has ranked one in missing children cases in India which is a major issue of concern. Looking at these inefficiencies, can we say that RTE Act has really been turned out to be a justiciable right for the children? - See more at: http://www.orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=40495#sthash.9raaqavo.dpuf
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