Mumbai schools fail to give RTE data since 2010

It has been over two years since the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) was implemented by the state, but none of the city schools have submitted mandatory information to the education department to date. This could lead to a delay in the implementation of the RTE Act.

The government had sought details such as student-teacher ratio, qualification of teachers and other such information from schools two years ago to formulate RTE norms.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan director Sanjay Deshmukh said all schools in the state, including private, aided and unaided ones, were in April 2010 given a form to fill as part of a mapping exercise to understand the ground reality in institutes. “The schools were given three months to submit the form, but not a single institute from the city and many from the state have done it as yet,” he said.

The Supreme Court judgment requires schools to be RTE compliant by 2013, but Deshmukh says apathy from the institutes will have a bearing on the implementation of the Act.

“The schools are at a loss by not submitting the form as they stand to lose recognition if they don’t comply with RTE rules,” Deshmukh said.

A crucial data sought by the government was about the qualification of teachers as under RTE, it is mandatory for those teaching languages in standards VI to VIII to be graduates. “However, many teachers teaching in these classes are undergraduates. Therefore, we need to give them a time-frame in which they can complete graduation. But the schools have already lost two years. It will take more time for us to implement the changes if they give us information now,” said Deshmukh.

School principals, however, feign ignorance. “The education department keeps collecting such information from us on a regular basis. We have provided information to it as and when required. We did not know we had to provide separate information for RTE,” said a principal of a private school in Dadar.