Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Everyone has the right to education' that was published in Newsband

Everyone has the right to education

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act should cover the entire spectrum of 18 years. This will help them acquire finishing education that is so vital to their participation in the workforce. It is absolutely essential for all of them to get an education that equips them with the skills, especially job-oriented vocational capabilities, the state of rural elementary education is far from encouraging.

There is raw enrolment of children in school, but miserable failures in achieving learning outcomes. Also, enrolment figures often do not mean high attendance. Secondary level students find it difficult to read standard texts meant for junior classes. Girls are worse off in terms of access to computers and the Internet. Bring all children under the umbrella of a school, college or training institution. All expenditure on good education is bound to have a multiplier effect on productivity. What is needed is a vision. Convert the objectives of RTE Act into reality.

The Government must make it mandatory for relevant vocational training courses to be available right at the school level. Currently, at least in some states, it has become a ritual to get a college degree after school, however substandard the college in question may be. In many cases it may happen that youths spend lakhs on an electronics or computer science course to end up working as a technical assistant or a call center operator for a salary of 10-20K a month. To avoid that students should receive vocational and entrepreneurial training right at school itself. If someone wants to work in tech support they need a few months of technical training; not years of wasting lakhs on a shitty college.

After making rules and yojanas to improve education system overall government don't check its effect on the ground.

There was a proposal that students applying for RTE quota seats be admitted to government or aided schools in their neighbourhoods, and to private schools only if there are no government or aided schools in the vicinity. The move to amend the Act has come under criticism as most wards in the city have a government and aided school, and changing the rules would mean that chances of a child getting admission under the RTE quota in a private school will be ruled out. The State government did not want to introduce these changes in an election year.

There is also a proposal to channelise funds — currently being spent on reimbursement for seats in private unaided schools — to government schools. This could be a good move.