Puducherry govt has failed to implement RTE, NGOs say

Times of India: Puducherry: Monday, March 24, 2014.

The Puducherry government has failed to implement the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act in letter and spirit four years after the act was passed. Even the Union government's deadline to implement the act ended on March 31 last year, almost a year ago.

Two non-government organizations, Holistic approach for People's Empowerment (Hope) and Rural Organization for Social Education (Rose) that gathered information using the RTI tool found that the directorate of school education did not issue any order or circular, directing the schools to reserve 25% of the seats for the children of the disadvantaged groups and of the weaker sections from the neighbourhood area.

The public information officer of the directorate of school education and state project director J Krishnaraju could not furnish information to the queries of the NGOs on the number of students admitted under 25% in private schools and expenses incurred for enforcing the landmark act from 2010 to 2013.

However, the directorate issued circulars prohibiting screening procedures for admission, banning corporal punishment in educational institutions, procedure to be adopted for renewal of recognition of schools and extending admissions after July 31.

It also directed the schools not to insist on birth certificates and transfer certificates to admit students and to constitute school management committees.

Hope director P Joseph Victor Raj urged the government to implement the act so that all private schools strictly comply with the provisions from the next academic year 2014-15. Regretting that the government has not been proactive, he recalled that the government notified the act in October, 2011 only after the Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL), Tamil Nadu and Puducherry chapter, filed a public interest litigation before the Madras high court.

The court, in its order dated August 1, 2010, directed the Puducherry government to notify the act within three months but the government took almost 14 months to honour the court order, he said.

Raj said RTI queries also revealed that 53% of the schools do not have playgrounds, 51% of the schools have not formed school management committees, 7% of the schools do not have separate and functional toilets for boys and girls, 17% of schools do not have boundary walls and 8% of the schools do not have libraries. The Union government passed the RTE Act on August 4, 2009. The Act came into effect in the country on April 1, 2010.