Education for all: Where there’s a Bill there’s a way

NEW DELHI: The Centre’s apathy towards providing free and basic education to children up to 14 years of age was evident from the fact that the right to free education Bill, already placed before Parliament, was not among the over-a-dozen Bills that were passed before the budget session was adjourned on Tuesday.

Though education for kids falls under Article 21, which guarantees right to life with dignity, the Centre took rather long to prepare a Bill to give effect to this constitutional mandate. The National University of Educational Planning and Administration, through District Information System for Education, says about 90,000 primary schools in the country do not have blackboards.

The supreme court had directed the Centre to make the right to free education legally binding.

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008 reflects the government’s commitment to provide cooked and nutritive mid-day meals to check dropout rates.

A 31-member Parliamentary Standing Committee on HRD says, at the primary level (Classes I-V) dropout rate was 29% and rose to 50.84% at elementary level (Classes I-VIII) and 61.92% at secondary level (Classes I-X). The dropout rate of boys was 31.81% and that of girls 25.42% at primary level, rose to 50.49% and 51.28% at secondary level in  2004-05.  Though 15crore children are covered under Mid Day Meal and Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, the meal plans were ill-enforced.