Will education really become a right for the children of the working masses?

On August 4 the Lok Sabha passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, which claims that it will provide millions of children the fundamental right to demand subsidised elementary education from the government. Hailing the passage of the Bill, Kapil Sibal, the Human Resource Development minister, told the House that “this is a revolutionary step that will help our children walk ahead with their heads held high. This is for our future.”

It may be recalled that in 2002 the 86th Constitutional Amendment (Article 21A) introduced by the NDA government had made the right to education for children of 6-14 years of age a fundamental right, pending a law for its implementation. The Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha earlier in this Parliament session, on July 20. To meet its 100 day commitment, the present UPA government has rushed through this bill at the fag end of this session of parliament.

Driven by its pursuit of becoming a global power, the Indian ruling class needs to be able to utilize the labour of its growing youth population for rapid expansion of manufacturing and service industries in India and abroad. For this it needs a certain degree of literacy and skills to be imparted to the youth. This explains the great emphasis on education by Manmohan Singh and in the policies of his UPA government. The passage of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill has been declared as one major step in this direction.

Outcome of many struggles

The ‘Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill’ is the outcome of many years of efforts and struggles (including legal battles – where students have been denied admission on account of inability to meet the expenses or other social disadvantages), by educationists, social activists and masses of people. It is a well known fact that the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution lays down that ‘the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 years’. However, despite the expansion in the number of elementary schools all over the country over the years, this goal of universal elementary education still continues to elude a large majority of children, especially those of the weaker and disadvantaged groups, a large number of whom have to drop out of school before completing elementary education. Moreover, the quality of learning achieved is not satisfactory in a large number of cases, even for children who have completed elementary education. It is with the vision of changing these conditions and actually guaranteeing the right to universal education, that educationists, social activists and masses of people have struggled and sought to make the state fulfil its responsibility in this regard.

However, even as the UPA government announces this bill as a “historic” piece of legislation, MPs across the political spectrum, bureaucrats as well as many educationists have voiced serious apprehensions about the implementation of the Bill and whether it will really make education a universal right. Apart from the issue of differing standards of school education, the Bill has also come under criticism for lacking teeth to punish those who violate it, and of having loopholes that may allow escape routes for those who infringe the proposed law.

According to the official propaganda, this bill aims to make elementary education a basic right for all and people of all classes across Indian society can now demand this right from the state. However, an examination of the bill in its present form shows that this is far from the truth. It is neither aimed at universalisation of education, nor at enabling the masses to take any legal action against the government if it fails to provide the conditions under which children can get education. Nor is it aimed at eliminating the huge profit-making by private institutions at the expense of the public, in the name of providing school education.

No curbs on private profit

The bill does not provide for uniform, affordable, good quality schooling in all parts of the country, to be demanded as a right. Private industrialists and institutions will continue to rake in huge profits by fleecing the people, in the name of providing school education, with only a miniscule freeship quota, for which too it will be partially reimbursed by the government. State funded schools will continue to grapple, with limited resources provided by the government, with all the problems associated with educating children who are first generation learners, whose families have relatively lower incomes, children in rural and backward areas, children who are victims of various natural and state organized calamities.

The bill states that ‘no child shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing the elementary education’. This is to be applicable to all schools run completely by the government. Government aided schools shall be required to provide free and compulsory elementary education to such proportion of students admitted as its annual recurring aid from the government bears to its annual recurring expenses, subject to a minimum of 25%. For private schools, the bill makes it mandatory to admit at least 25 percent of total students in class 1 (and continuing up to completion of elementary education) for economically weaker and disadvantaged groups of the neighbourhood.

According to the bill, the government will reimburse the private school at the rate of per child expenditure in government schools (different in different states). Schools which are already required to ensure free education for some percentage of students of weaker sections because of having received land, building, equipment, or other facilities from the government either free or at concessional rates (including subsidized electricity and water supply, house tax etc.) will not be entitled to reimbursement by the government for that percentage (See Box 1).

The Bill states that all conditions set by the Bill regarding curricula, teaching standards and other requirements will be applicable to all categories of schools.

Educationists have argued that on an average central and state governments spend about Rs. 2000 to Rs. 2500 per child per year, while private schools charge much more. Fees charged by schools for extra curricular activities and other facilities will not be covered under this bill. Thus, children who enter the private schools under this (EWS) category are likely to face social discrimination. Moreover, each State government will have the freedom to decide what ‘economically weaker and disadvantaged’ means in that state.

Government protects itself and school managements from prosecution

Some of the other clauses in the bill make it clear that it might be very difficult, in fact almost impossible for most families to avail of education as a right or to challenge the system if they are denied this right in practice.

For example, the bill bans schools from collecting capitation fees or holding screening procedures while admitting students (See Box 2). But Section 35 of the bill specifies that prosecution — for charging capitation fees, conducting admission screening and running a school without recognition — will be allowed only conditionally.

While the bill states that any person with any grievance can make a complaint to the local authority, clause 35 of the bill says that “No prosecution for (these) offences… shall be instituted except with the previous sanction of an officer authorised in this behalf, by the appropriate government, by notification,” which essentially means that unless the authorised officer sanctions prosecution, no legal action can be taken against errant schools. In other words, apart from bureaucratic hurdles, whether a complainant receives a hearing or not will depend on the discretion of the authorized official, who may well be under pressure to work in the interests of the schools concerned (especially if these are private schools which can bribe the officials).

The bill assigns the task of monitoring the implementation of the act to the National Council for protection of Child Rights and the State Commission for protection of Child Rights. However clause 36 of the bill protects the Centre, the states, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and its state equivalents, the local government and school authorities from legal action if they violate the bill in “good faith”.

“No suit or other legal proceedings shall lie against the central government, the state government, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the local authority, the school management committee or any person, in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done, in pursuance of this act, or any rules or order made thereunder,” this section says. The bill does not define what constitutes “good faith”.

Educationists and social activists have argued that this clause can allow a school to get away with physical or mental torture to a child with the excuse that it was done “in good faith”. It can allow the government to get away without fulfilling the student-teacher ratio as required by the law, with the excuse that it would have to hire sub-standard teachers.

‘Neighbourhood’ definition left to government discretion

According to the bill, ‘every child of the age of 6 to 14 years shall have a right to free and compulsory education in a neighbourhood school, till completion of elementary education’. The bill makes it mandatory for each state government to set up neighbourhood schools within 3 years, until which time the local authority may send the child to some other far away school. However, the bill leaves it to each state government and local authority to define what will meant by ‘neighbourhood’ in any particular area. Given the geographical and social diversity, it remains questionable as to how far this will facilitate access to education for poor children in far flung, mountainous, forest or undeveloped areas.

Public-private partnership – euphemism for facilitating private profit

In 2007 PM Manmohan Singh had announced the project of setting up 6000 ‘model’ schools under the public-private partnership in the ‘most educationally backward’ blocks in the country, which are to act as exemplars for other schools in the region. They have been publicised as pillars crucial for the success of the right to education law.

After much debate between representatives of the government and industry on the extent of public and private investment and whether the government or the private partner gets first control, it has now been reported that according to the model which is to be presented to the Cabinet for the first 2500 of such ‘model’ schools, the government will withdraw from the management of the schools after investing an initial Rs 50 lakh per school. There will be no recurring budgetary allocation in subsequent years for these schools. In other words, after the initial investment, the government plans to hand over the management of these schools to the private parties involved, allowing them to set their fees and standards.

Moreover, the bill makes no mention about what the government’s responsibility will be towards the children who do obtain education upto the age of 14 (upto Class 8), after they have crossed this stage. If these students are not able to meet the high fees and academic standards set by private schools (which may the only schools available to them in many areas) after class 8, they will be left with no choice but to drop out.

It also must be clarified that the passage of the bill in parliament triggers off a whole series of bureaucratic procedures that must be completed before children and their families can hope to benefit from it. The law is implementable only after its notification.

Norms for funding as yet uncertain

The Bill also does not specify where the finances for such a massive project will come from. The Human Resource Development Ministry and the Finance Commission have yet to finalise the funding required to implement the law. The norms for sharing the financial burden between the Centre and states also have to be evolved. For this financial year, the Centre will need to obtain Parliament’s sanction for revised budget allocations. It is stated at the conclusion of the text of the Bill that ‘the expenditure on provision of funds by the Central Government would be met from the Consolidated Fund of India through annual budgetary provision under the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of HRD’.

The above facts clarify that while the “right to education bill” is the outcome of long-standing demands and aspirations of masses of people, it will not really empower the masses of poor working people from holding the government accountable for not fulfilling its responsibility towards its citizens – i.e. of providing universal, good quality, affordable education as a fundamental right, which is what people have been demanding. In fact, the Bill includes provisions that will allow the government to hand over its responsibility in this regard to private capitalists, allow private capitalists to rake in huge profits in the name of providing education and even protect the government and the private capitalists from the anger of the people, by putting in place various bureaucratic escape routes. At best, it will provide some level of education and skills to a larger number of youth, so that they can enter the work force better trained than at present, to be super-exploited by the capitalists and earn them bigger profits.

The struggle for universal, good quality, affordable education as a fundamental right for all children as well as for mechanisms to hold the state accountable if it fails in its responsibility to ensure this right, must be taken further until this right is actually realized in practice.