Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE) is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between the age of 6 to 14 years in India under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the act came into force on 1 April 2010..

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009
Parliament of India
Long title An Act to provide for free and compulsory education to all the children of the age of six to fourteen years.
Citation	Act No. 35 of 2009
Enacted by	Parliament of India
Assented to	26 August 2009
Commenced	1 April 2010
Related legislation
86th Amendment (2002)
Status: In force

History

The present Act has its history in the Constitutional Amendment of 2002 that included Article 21A in the Indian Constitution (the 86th Amendment) making Education a fundamental Right. This amendment specified the need for legislation to describe the mode of implementation of the same which was met through the introduction of this Act.

The first draft of the bill was prepared in 2005. It caused considerable controversy due to it setting aside 25% of seats in private schools for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, among others. However, the sub-committee of the Central Advisory Board of Education which prepared the draft Bill held this provision as a significant prerequisite for creating a democratic and egalitarian society. Indeed, the Indian Law Commission had initially proposed 50% reservation for disadvantaged students in private schools.

With this, India has moved forward to a rights-based framework that casts a legal obligation on the Central and State Governments to implement this fundamental child right as enshrined in the Article 21A of the Constitution, in accordance with the provisions of the RTE Act. 17.

Precedents

It has been pointed out that the RTE Act is not new. Universal adult franchise in the act was opposed since most of the population was illiterate. Article 45 in the Constitution of India was set up as an act:

The state shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years. As that deadline was about to be passed many decades ago, the education minister at the time, M C Chagla, memorably said:

Our Constitution fathers did not intend that we just set up hovels, put students there, give untrained teachers, give them bad textbooks, no playgrounds, and say, we have complied with Article 45 and primary education is expanding... They meant that real education should be given to our children between the ages of 6 and 14 – M.C. Chagla, 1964

In the 1990s, the World Bank funded a number of measures to set up schools within easy reach of rural communities. This effort was consolidated in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan model in the 1990s. RTE takes the process further, and makes the enrolment of children in schools a state prerogative.

Passage

The bill was approved by the cabinet on 2 July 2009. The Rajya Sabha passed the bill on 20 July 2009 and the Lok Sabha on 4 August 2009. It received Presidential assent and was notified as law on 26 August 2009 as The Children's Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act. The law came into effect in the whole of India except the state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1 April 2010. When adopting the Act, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated, "We are committed to ensuring that all children, irrespective of gender and social category, have access to education. An education that enables them to acquire the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes necessary to become responsible and active citizens of India."

Highlights

The RTE Act provides for the right of children to free and compulsory education till the completion of elementary education in a neighbourhood school. It clarifies that 'compulsory education' means the obligation of the appropriate government to provide free elementary education and ensure compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary education to every child in the six to fourteen age group. 'Free' means 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 elementary education.

Admission and access to education The RTE Act requires surveys that will monitor all neighbourhoods, identify children requiring education, and set up facilities for providing it. The World Bank education specialist for India, Sam Carlson, has observed:

The RTE Act is the first legislation in the world that puts the responsibility of ensuring enrolment, attendance and completion on the Government. It is the parents' responsibility to send the children to schools in the US and other countries.

It makes provisions for a newly admitted child to be admitted to an age-appropriate class.

Implementation Framework It specifies the duties and responsibilities of appropriate Governments, local authorities and parents in providing free and compulsory education and sharing of financial and other responsibilities between the Central and State Governments. It also provides for the establishment of School Management Committees (SMCs) in all schools to provide scope for parental and community participation in education. Monitoring and accountability frameworks are also laid down. The RTE Act provides for the establishment of a 14-member National Advisory Council (NAC) for implementation of the Act.

Quality It lays down the norms and standards relating inter alia to pupil-teacher ratios (PTRs), buildings and infrastructure, school-working days, and teacher-working hours. It provides for the rational deployment of adequate numbers of appropriately trained and qualified teachers by ensuring that the specified pupil-teacher ratio is maintained for each school, rather than just as an average for the State or District or Block, thus ensuring that there is no urban-rural imbalance in teacher postings. It also provides for the prohibition of deployment of teachers for non-educational work, other than decennial census, elections to local authority, state legislatures and parliament, and disaster relief.

It provides for the development of curriculum in consonance with the values enshrined in the Constitution, and which would ensure the all-round development of the child, building on the child's knowledge, potentiality and talent and making the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety through a system of child-friendly and child centered learning.

Child friendly provisions It prohibits (a) physical punishment and mental harassment; (b) screening procedures for admission of children; (c) capitation fee; (d) private tuition by teachers and (e) running of schools without recognition.

The details of the Right to Education of persons with disabilities until 18 years of age are laid down under the later Persons with Disabilities Act. A number of other provisions regarding the improvement of school infrastructure, teacher-student ratio and faculty are made in the Act.

Amendments

The Right to Education (RTE) Act in India has undergone several amendments over time. In 2017, an amendment extended the deadline for unqualified teachers to obtain required certifications, focusing on teacher training through distance learning. The 2019 amendment removed the "no-detention policy," allowing states to introduce examinations in Classes 5 and 8 and detain students who fail while mandating remedial instruction and re-examinations. Future revisions may expand the Act's coverage to early childhood and secondary education, aligning with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which stresses digital learning and vocational education to address contemporary challenges.

On 7 May 2014, The Supreme Court of India ruled that Right to Education Act is not applicable to Minority institutions.

A critical development in 2011 has been the decision taken in principle to extend the right to education till Class X (age 16) and into the preschool age range. However, the government's more recent policy focus has been on the introduction of a new National Education Policy instead of an extension of the Act.

Status of implementation and funding

Significant achievements

The Right to Education (RTE) Act, implemented in India in 2010, has made several significant contributions to the country's education system. Some of the major achievements include:

Increased Enrollment, reduced dropout and closure of gender gaps: Overall school enrollment reached 97.2% by 2018 Similarly, there has been an increase in the enrollment of girls in primary and secondary education.

Improved Infrastructure: Stricter infrastructure norms led to better school facilities. Thus, for example, the proportion of schools with usable girls' toilets doubled to 66.4% by 2018 Teacher recruitment and training have received a boost, improving educational delivery.

Inclusion of Disadvantaged Groups: Over 3.3 million students admitted under the 25% quota for economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups

Continued policy implementation gap

Despite these successes, there is a large policy implementation gap. Thus, according to the last available estimates in the public domain, 25.5% of schools are RTE compliant in terms of meeting the entire set of infrastructure norms based on UDISE 2019-20; Compliance rates have ranged between 63.6% (Punjab) and a mere 1.3% in Meghalaya. Regularly updated data on RTE compliance is no longer available in the public domain.

A report on the status of implementation of the Act was released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development on the one-year anniversary of the Act, and again till 2015. The report admits that 1.7 million children in the age group 6-14 remain out of school and there's a shortage of 508,000 teachers country-wide. A shadow report by the National RTE Forum, representing the leading education networks in the country led by the late Ambarish Rai (a prominent activist), challenging the findings pointing out that several key legal commitments are falling behind schedule.[20] The Supreme Court of India has also intervened to demand implementation of the Act.[21] It has also provided the legal basis for ensuring pay parity between teachers in government and government aided schools[22]

Challenges to implementation

A major stumbling block to the Act's implementation has been the Indian state's failure to invest the funds needed to improve the country's schools to the standards laid down under the Act. India continues to spend under 4% of its GDP on education which is below the minimum agreed upon globally for SDG 4 or EFA implementation. Education under the Indian constitution is a concurrent issue where both the centre and states can legislate. The states have been clamouring that they lack the financial capacity to deliver education of appropriate standards in all the schools.

A committee set up to study the fund requirement for the implementation of the RTE Act and it was estimated that the funding estimated to be necessary wast Rs 1710 billion or 1.71 trillion (US$38.2 billion) across five years. In April 2010 the central government agreed to share the funding for implementing the law in the ratio of 65 to 35 between the centre and the states, and a ratio of 90 to 10 for the north-eastern states. However, in mid-2010, this figure was upgraded to Rs. 2310 billion, and the center agreed to raise its share to 68%. However, despite this agreement, funding for education has remained low, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic. ref>"Revisiting the Priorities: An Analysis of Union Budget 2024-25" (PDF). CBGA. 2024. Retrieved 4 January 2025.</ref>

Inter-state variation

The status of implementation varies across states. Haryana Government has assigned the duties and responsibilities to Block Elementary Education Officers–cum–Block Resource Coordinators (BEEOs-cum-BRCs) for effective implementation and continuous monitoring of implementation of the Right to Education Act in the State.

Criticism

The Act has been criticised for being hastily drafted, not consulting many groups active in education, inadequately focussing on improving the quality of education, infringing on the rights of private and religious minority schools to administer their system, and excluding children under six years of age.. Furthermore, many of the ideas are seen as merely continuing the policies of existing government programmes Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of the 2000s, and the earlier World Bank funded District Primary Education Programme DPEP of the '90s. Both, while having set up a number of schools in rural areas, have been criticised for being ineffective and corruption-ridden.

Failing to provide universal standards of quality

The Act has been criticised as discriminatory in not providing quality education of a uniform standard across all of India's schools. Well-known educationist Anil Sadgopal said of the act:

It is a fraud on our children. It gives neither free education nor compulsory education. In fact it only legitimises the present multi-layered, inferior-quality school education system where discrimination shall continue to prevail.

Entrepreneur Gurcharan Das noted that 54% of urban children attend private schools, and this rate is growing at 3% per year. "Even the poor children are abandoning the government schools. They are leaving because the teachers are not showing up." However, other researchers have countered the argument by saying that the apparent evidence for higher learning levels in private schools often disappears when other factors (like family income and parental literacy) are accounted for.

Public-private partnership

To address these quality issues, the Act has provisions for compensating private schools for admission of children under the 25% quota which has been compared to school vouchers, whereby parents may "send" their children to any school, private or public. This measure, along with the increase in PPP (Public Private Partnership) has been viewed by some organisations such as the All-India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE), as the state abdicating its "constitutional obligation towards providing elementary education".

Critique from private schools

Given the inadequate financing for public education, the quality of education provided by the government school system is often not good and suffers from teacher and infrastructure gaps. There are also allegations of government schools being riddled with absenteeism and mismanagement and of appointments made on political convenience. Average schoolteacher salaries in private rural schools in some States (about Rs. 4,000 per month) are considerably lower than those in government schools. As a result, proponents of fees-charging low-cost private schools critique the government schools as being poor value for money. This criticism, however, ignores the reality of low-quality standards in many low-fee schools, the majority of which are unrecognized for failing to adhere to the low standards of quality laid down by the government. At the same time, being fees charging, low fees private schools, by definition, are not able to enroll children from the poorest families. Proponents of private schools state that those children who attend private schools are at an advantage given caste and other forms of discrimination in government schools. However, these schools's existence has been criticised as catering to the rural elites who are able to afford school fees in a country where a large number of families live in absolute poverty.

The Society for Un-aided Private Schools, Rajasthan (in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 95 of 2010) and 31 others pro-private school groups petitioned the Supreme Court of India claiming that the act violates the constitutional right of private managements to run their institutions without governmental interference. The parties claimed that providing 25 percent reservation for disadvantaged children in government and private unaided schools was "unconstitutional".

On 12 April 2012, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered its 2-1 judgement. Chief Justice SH Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar held that providing the reservation is not unconstitutional but stated that the Act will not be applicable to private minority schools and boarding schools. However, Justice K. S. Panicker Radhakrishnan dissented with the majority view and held that the Act cannot apply to minority and non-minority private schools that do not receive aid from the government.

In September 2012, the Supreme Court declined a review petition on the Act.

Extensive case law exists on the issue in the States. Thus, in Tamil Nadu in May 2016, the Chetpet-based CBSE school Maharishi Vidya Mandir became embroiled in a scandal over its circumvention of the 25% quota rule. During its admissions cycle, the school told economically weaker parents "the RTE does not exist' and "we do not take these [government RTE] applications." The senior principal also informed the Tamil Nadu Regional Director of the CBSE that he intended to "reject applicants without an email address" and so excluded technically illiterate parents from seeking admissions. In addition, school officials falsified the distance figures of several poorer candidates to attempt to disqualify them from availing of the scheme.

In 2017, A public interest litigation was filed in the high courts of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, seeking proper implementation of 25% quota in both states under RTE Act. For which the high courts addressed the governments of both states to take necessary steps for the proper implementation of the act.

Barrier for orphans

The Act provides for the admission of children without any certification. However, several states have continued pre-existing procedures insisting that children produce income and caste certificates, BPL cards and birth certificates. Orphan children are often unable to produce such documents, even though they are willing to do so. As a result, schools are not admitting them, as they require the documents as a condition of admission.