Free, compulsory and quality education for all the children was the utmost need for our country where more than 70 per cent of them depend on public education system in elementary level.
After a long and concerted effort by civil societies in our country, our Prime Minister handed over Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 on April 1, 2010. It is mentioned in the Act that all the norms and standards of RTE Act will be fulfilled within three years of the commencement of the Act.
March 31, 2013 is the deadline of fulfilling all the norms. But the dream of enjoying free, compulsory and quality
elementary educations for every child in public schools have not been realized. Odisha was the second State after Sikkim to form rules on RTE Act but flaws and lopsided development has taken its implementation far from the desired goals.
As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2012, 96 per cent of all children in the 6 to 14 years age group in rural Odisha were enrolled in schools out of which 89.6 per cent enrolled in public schools.
As per the Section 12 of the RTE Act, the School and Mass Education Department has issued an order to all private unaided schools to admit at least 25 per cent of its entry level class from children belonging to economically weaker section, but this has gone hallow as there is no system facilitated to reimburse the school fees charged by the schools.
The issues of teachers in our State are very grim. The State has over 35, 928 primary schools and 20, 427 upper primary schools. Out of the total teacher strength of 167,948, 79,715 teachers are either Shiksha Sahayaks or Gana Shikshak.
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 7,000 elementary schools of our State are run by a single teacher. As a fall out, teachers are demonstrating throughout the year.
Teachers’ absenteeism is also a major cause which affects teaching in classrooms. Again, the school is a dream for 4,560 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 teacher post in tribal languages in order to mainstream them into schools, but this has not been given due weight.
According to the data revealed by the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA), Odisha has been lagging behind in being an RTE compliant State. 13 per cent of school
classrooms, 66 per cent in girl’s toilet in schools, 46 per cent in building ramp, 74 per cent in opening a library in schools and 66 per cent in building boundary wall have not been complied with RTE norms in elementary level.
In order to fulfill the needs of teachers as per the norms, the State has to fill up the vacancy of around 13, 000 teachers in schools. In 2012-13, there was an allocation of Rs 6,525 crore for education in the State which has been increased to Rs 71, 442 crore in 2013-14 fiscal budget.
But if we compare the increase with the inflation and increased share of child population in a year, the increase in the budget is not enough. There is under utilization of SSA funds. While Rs 2,680 crore was allocated for SSA, only 50 per cent has been spent till December 2012.
Last year, an allocation of Rs 94 lakh was made for school libraries of which only 28 per cent of the fund has been spent. While Rs 80 crore was allocated under Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV), our State has been able to spend only Rs 23 crore under the scheme.
The percentage of fund utilization till December 2012 is 83 per cent with respect to fund available and 49 per cent with respect to annual work plan and budget. In the field of infrastructure, 51 per cent of fund has been utilized and 67 per cent of fund utilization has been witnessed in text book supply.
Similarly, Government’s target was to provide drinking water facilities to 5,972 schools last year, but not even a single school had been provided drinking water facilities till January last. Therefore, underutilization and lack of monitoring mechanism has given birth to a huge gap between budgeted expenditure and actual spending in education.
Despite very few 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 awful. Knowledge on basic arithmetic and numeric counting capacity of school children is very scary.
As per the RTE Act, there should be a State level advisory committee on education which is not yet formed. In order to tackle the problems of child labourer, juveniles in conflict with laws and street children, there must be a convergence to monitor these issues and mainstream the deprived children into schools.
School Management Committee and local authority had been seen as tools for school governance but their performances are not yet satisfactory. 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 disheartening.
After 1997, the State Government has not undertaken any child labour survey. Odisha has been 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?
Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/bhubaneswar/rte-implementation-still-sluggish-in-state.html
After a long and concerted effort by civil societies in our country, our Prime Minister handed over Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 on April 1, 2010. It is mentioned in the Act that all the norms and standards of RTE Act will be fulfilled within three years of the commencement of the Act.
March 31, 2013 is the deadline of fulfilling all the norms. But the dream of enjoying free, compulsory and quality
elementary educations for every child in public schools have not been realized. Odisha was the second State after Sikkim to form rules on RTE Act but flaws and lopsided development has taken its implementation far from the desired goals.
As per the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2012, 96 per cent of all children in the 6 to 14 years age group in rural Odisha were enrolled in schools out of which 89.6 per cent enrolled in public schools.
As per the Section 12 of the RTE Act, the School and Mass Education Department has issued an order to all private unaided schools to admit at least 25 per cent of its entry level class from children belonging to economically weaker section, but this has gone hallow as there is no system facilitated to reimburse the school fees charged by the schools.
The issues of teachers in our State are very grim. The State has over 35, 928 primary schools and 20, 427 upper primary schools. Out of the total teacher strength of 167,948, 79,715 teachers are either Shiksha Sahayaks or Gana Shikshak.
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 7,000 elementary schools of our State are run by a single teacher. As a fall out, teachers are demonstrating throughout the year.
Teachers’ absenteeism is also a major cause which affects teaching in classrooms. Again, the school is a dream for 4,560 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 teacher post in tribal languages in order to mainstream them into schools, but this has not been given due weight.
According to the data revealed by the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA), Odisha has been lagging behind in being an RTE compliant State. 13 per cent of school
classrooms, 66 per cent in girl’s toilet in schools, 46 per cent in building ramp, 74 per cent in opening a library in schools and 66 per cent in building boundary wall have not been complied with RTE norms in elementary level.
In order to fulfill the needs of teachers as per the norms, the State has to fill up the vacancy of around 13, 000 teachers in schools. In 2012-13, there was an allocation of Rs 6,525 crore for education in the State which has been increased to Rs 71, 442 crore in 2013-14 fiscal budget.
But if we compare the increase with the inflation and increased share of child population in a year, the increase in the budget is not enough. There is under utilization of SSA funds. While Rs 2,680 crore was allocated for SSA, only 50 per cent has been spent till December 2012.
Last year, an allocation of Rs 94 lakh was made for school libraries of which only 28 per cent of the fund has been spent. While Rs 80 crore was allocated under Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV), our State has been able to spend only Rs 23 crore under the scheme.
The percentage of fund utilization till December 2012 is 83 per cent with respect to fund available and 49 per cent with respect to annual work plan and budget. In the field of infrastructure, 51 per cent of fund has been utilized and 67 per cent of fund utilization has been witnessed in text book supply.
Similarly, Government’s target was to provide drinking water facilities to 5,972 schools last year, but not even a single school had been provided drinking water facilities till January last. Therefore, underutilization and lack of monitoring mechanism has given birth to a huge gap between budgeted expenditure and actual spending in education.
Despite very few 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 awful. Knowledge on basic arithmetic and numeric counting capacity of school children is very scary.
As per the RTE Act, there should be a State level advisory committee on education which is not yet formed. In order to tackle the problems of child labourer, juveniles in conflict with laws and street children, there must be a convergence to monitor these issues and mainstream the deprived children into schools.
School Management Committee and local authority had been seen as tools for school governance but their performances are not yet satisfactory. 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 disheartening.
After 1997, the State Government has not undertaken any child labour survey. Odisha has been 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?
Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/bhubaneswar/rte-implementation-still-sluggish-in-state.html
No comments:
Post a Comment