“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity” – Aristotle.
India is a country which is famous for its elements like art, architecture and main is culture of India but India is also famous for its constitution as well as it is considered as the mother document of India. Education may be a fundamental right and essential for the exercise of all human rights. Yet millions of children are deprived of educational opportunities, so this result of poverty.
RIGHT TO EDUCATION
The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, included article 21-A (“Right to Education”) within the Constitution of India, establishing education as a fundamental right. Article 21-A tells us that “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all or any children of the age of six to 14 years in such manner because the State may, by law, determine.”
Education is on the Concurrent List of shared material, which enables both the central government and therefore the individual states to manage education. Prior to the insertion of article 21-A, the Supreme Court of India held in 1992 that the proper to education was a fundamental right that flowed from article 21, concerning the right to life.
SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT & RTE ACT, 2010
In a 2011 decision the Supreme Court stated that the right of youngsters to free and compulsory education has been made a fundamental right under Article 21A of the Constitution. Now every child of the age of 6 to 14 years has right to possess free education in neighbourhood school till education. Article 21-A and therefore the RTE Act came into effect on 1 April 2010.
RTE: FREE AND COMPULSORY
The title of the RTE Act incorporates the words ‘free and compulsory’.
‘Free education’ means no child, aside from a toddler who has been admitted by his or her parents to a faculty which isn’t supported by the acceptable Government, shall be susceptible to pay any quite fee or charges or expenses which can prevent him or her from pursuing and completing education .
‘Compulsory education’ casts an obligation on the acceptable Government and native authorities to supply and ensure admission, attendance and completion of education by all children within the 6-14 age bracket .
With this, India has moved forward to a rights based framework that casts a legal obligation on the Central and State Governments to implement this fundamental child right as enshrined within the Article 21A of the Constitution, in accordance with the provisions of the RTE Act.
BASIC GUIDELINES OF THE ACT
The Act also lays down that:
- No school can deny admission to a student and every one schools are required to possess well trained and experiences teachers.
- In case of these schools which aren’t having trained teachers, they’re going to need to suits this provision within three years.
- The schools should even have certain minimum facilities to assist in providing an honest learning atmosphere to the youngsters.
- Basic minimum facilities like adequate teachers, playground and infrastructure should be there.
The government will evolve some mechanism to help marginalized schools to comply with the provisions of the Act
The government had prepared and arranged for model rules which are circulated to the states for preparing their own rules so as to supply for the implementation of the Act. The Centre had also prepared separate rules for the Union Territories.
However, the reservation for weaker section wasn’t be implemented from the year of implementation because the admission season was almost over. It was implemented from 2011-12.
The government and native authorities were directed to determine primary schools within walking distance of 1 km of the neighborhood. In the cases of youngsters studying in school VI to VIII, the children’s school should be within a walking distance of three km of the neighborhood.
One important point of the consideration is that giving free education to children upto 8th class is either sufficient to prepare a child with its basic skills and also important for gaining some knowledge.
Education nowadays is much more then mere literacy and it aims at full development of the child. The right to education provides a framework for accepting that basic education is literally important for every citizen of the country regardless of their caste, religion etc. And from comparison of US and India it is absolutely clear that right to life and personal liberty is being given to people of India only be the way of article 21, main scope of article 21 is wider than provision of US constitution as it only gives protection to the citizens but at the same time Indian constitution gives protection to both citizens and aliens of India.
RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION: IMPLICATIONS AND CHALLENGES
The commencement of this fundamental right to an education , still in parliamentary process but expected that it is going to be in reality soon is important for a country that has witness decades of policy failure to make free and compulsory education for the children of the age group till 14 years. About 110 million children remain out of the schooling system, and there about 60% who enroll in school drop by grade 8. The gap which occurs between discourse and operational framework in all types of policy efforts in education, and extensive development, has long been cited as a main reason for India’s poor performance in securing the equitable educational opportunity for all of us. Despite a range of commitments made in the Indian Constitution to equality, addressing the historical disadvantage faced by mainly the certain groups, policies on the ground have done a little to attain the ambitious vision developed at the birth of the modern Indian nation-state. This gap usually appears in danger of persisting, even with the shift to guaranteeing the right to education.
CONCLUSION
To quote Justice PN Bhagwati, Former Chief Justice of India:
“The child is a soul with a being, a nature and capacities of its own, who must be helped to find them, to grow into their maturity, into a fullness of physical and vital energy and the utmost breadth, depth and height of its emotional, intellectual and spiritual being; otherwise there cannot be a healthy growth of the nation.”
Every generation looks up to the next generation with a wish that they shall build up our country better than the present one. Education which empowers the future generation should always be the main concern for every nation. It is now an unquestioned fact that right to education can be realized on a national level only through compulsory education, or better say, through free compulsory primary education. However due to the poverty and various preconception in the society, the efforts to develop an educational system in India with full access, equality and quality of education has not been achieved. The inability to check the dropout rates among the marginalized sections of the population is another cause of worry for nation.
Author: KRISH BHATIA,
CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY 1 YEAR BALLB