New Delhi: Eight civil society organisations, teacher unions and academicians working in the education sector across 20 states have issued a statement condemning Parliament’s decision to pass the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017. Maintaining that the Bill paves the way to detain children in Classes V and VIII, the 70-odd signatories have contended that such an amendment is proof of the government’s failure to implement the RTE Act and their resolve to punish over 150 million children.
Stating that 90% of schools in India are not fully RTE-compliant even eight years after the Act has been implemented, the signatories have expressed their observations on the no-detention policy.
There is no established cause-effect link between ‘learning levels’ and ‘no detention policy’; research highlights how it is the poor quality of education, lack of infrastructure, teacher vacancies and the presence of untrained teachers that have had an effect on learning outcomes and not just the lack of examinations as argued by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
Since the introduction of ‘No Detention’, the annual dropout rate has halved(from 8.61% in 2006-07 to 4.34% in 2014-15).The retention rate has increased by 9% (74.92% in 2008 to 83.73% in 2014-15) and the transition rate (Primary to Upper Primary) has increased by 7%. Of the 20 states which shared their results with the Bhukkal Committee, 13 reported an increase in the pass percentage for Class X exams. The NDP, along with other RTE provisions, has had no negative impact on academic performances. On the contrary, it has helped to retain children in schools and has improved theirlearning by enabling them to complete their elementary education.
The signatories have argued that the Bill has been “introduced on the pretext of improving learning outcomes” and that successive governments have failed to “implement Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) in its true spirit, which was expected to provide the tool for teachers to understand difficulties of students and address them in the classrooms.”
Pointing to global evidence on detaining children, the statement says that detention has proven to be detrimental to students’ self-esteem and motivation to continue in school. “After concerted efforts of 15 years, India has achieved the present level of enrolment and was trying to reach gender parity in elementary education. This move risks reversing these gains without improving the quality of education or enhancing learning,” it says.
The signatories invoke government’s own data which shows student detention to be one of the primary reasons for dropping out of school.
According to the National Family Health Survey 4 (2015-2016) data, one of the top six reasons for school dropouts was ‘repeated failure’ with 3.5% of the cases registered at the national level. In the previous NFHS Survey, repeated failure in school was ranked higher than reasons like required-for-care-of sibling,required-for-outside-work for payment in cash or kind and required-for-work-on-farm/family business. Repetition contributes to school dropout. Children from Dalit and Adivasi communities are most likely to be affected since among those who secured less than 30% marks are from Dalit, Adivasi and Other Backward Caste backgrounds.
The signatories have demanded that the Ministry of Human Resource Development withdraw the amendment to Section 16 of the RTE, which violates Supreme Court ruling.
We the undersigned organisations and individuals make a collective appeal to the Rajya Sabha, to not allow this bill to be passed, and send back it to the LokSabha for an informed and detailed debate. It is about the future of millions of children in this country and needs serious attention from our policymakers, and elected representatives. Over 20,000 Indians have urged the government to withdraw the scrapping of the ‘No Detention Policy’.