India's elite private schools have been ordered to reserve a quarter of their places for poor children.
India's elite private schools have been ordered to reserve a quarter of their places for poor children.
The order was made by the country's Supreme Court after schools challenged the government's right to education bill which made primary education compulsory.
More than one in three Indians and half of Indian women are illiterate, which campaigners say reflects the fact that half of India's children do not go to school. Of those who do, half drop out before the age of 11 from schools where absenteeism among teachers is rife.
The legislation will create a three year school-building programme and end the powers of government officials to award places to favoured families.
Thousands of new teachers will have to be trained in a sector where many expect to be paid without turning up. Officials will also have to persuade parents that their families will be wealthier if they send their children to school rather than work.
The impact of the bill will be felt most keenly by private schools, many of which are modelled on Britain's public school system. For the first time, some of the country's wealthiest children will be taught alongside some of the poorest.
Some schools challenged the legislation, but were overruled by the Supreme Court in a move which heralds a caste and class revolution in the Indian establishment's most cherished institutions.
While traditional boarding schools in the Himalayan foothills and hill stations in the south - which charge around pounds 3,000 per year - are exempted, those with day pupils will have to open up to the poor, some of whom live on 34p per day. These include colonial schools such as Bangalore's Bishop Cotton's, which have educated some of India's leading public figures. Kapil Sibal, the education minister, welcomed the court's ruling. Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal of Springdales, one of New Delhi's leading private schools, also welcomed the ruling.
"After 64 years of wait, India can dream of educating its children," she said.
But she warned that the government will have to fund the changes and help recruit new teachers. Poor children need help with books, uniforms, and computers, she said, to stop "ghettoisation".
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