Right to Education Act: Universalisation or Entrenched Exclusion?

Abstract

Right to Education (RTE) Act is intended to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children aged 6–14 years. This article examines key constituents of elementary education in view of the RTE Act such as current attendance rate, types of institutions, medium of instruction, neighbourhood schools, Monthly per capita expenditure on elementary education (MPCEE)and incentives during pre- and post-RTE period using National Sample Survey Organisation’s 64th (2007–2008) and 71st (2014) round of unit level data. The result shows that far from the universalisation, exclusion is getting entrenched across gender, sector, and socio-religious and economic groups. Female children, children from deprived socio-religious groups, rural areas and from the bottom MPCE quintile have not only fared lower in most of the studied parameters during the pre-RTE period, but the gap from their counterpart has widened immensely during the post-RTE period. Free education has declined and monthly per capita expenditure on elementary education has increased sharply. Children are moving out of the government to private schools. The findings raise serious questions on the intention of the government to fulfil its mandate under RTE.

Juxtaposing Consumption Poverty and Multidimensional Poverty: A Study in Indian Context

“…Increase in disbursement of subsidised food grain benefits from PDS and ICDS played a crucial role for this improvement which was also highlighted by Bhaskar (2011), Himanshu (2013), Himanshu and Sen (2013), IDFC (2013) and Jha and Acharya, (2016) as well. Considerable upliftment in the school enrolment and school attendance has been observed too during this period due to the implementation of MDM programme (De et al 2011;ASER 2013;Jayaraman and Simroth 2015), ICDS (Srivastava and Bhaskar 2011;Himanshu 2013;Himanshu and Sen 2013;IDFC 2013) and also the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 (Kumar et al 2019) which enhanced admission and attendance together with completion of elementary education for the children of 3-14 years age group. Even the share of deprived people who had no access to electricity reduced significantly mainly due to policies taken up by the government in this regard specifically National Electricity Policy ( 2005) and National Rural Electrification Policy ( 2006) which solely aimed at providing quality and reliable power supply at reasonable rates to all households (GoI 2011a).…”

Teacher Beliefs about Disadvantaged Students in the global South: Theory and Evidence

“…Luu's (2008) interviews with Khmer children in Vietnam found that teachers could be dismissive of their ethnic language (p. 158). In South Asia, the role of caste in contemporary political, socio-cultural, economic and symbolic power is complex (Desai & Dubey, 2012), although major sociological works confirm that caste remains a significant axis of teachers' attitudes and expectations regarding marginalized learners (Kumar et al, 2019;Majumdar & Mooij, 2012;Ramachandran, 2018;Sriprakash, 2012). Studies have shown teachers in India construing first-generation Adivasi (tribal) and Dalit (lower-caste) learners and their families as 'slow' and 'backward' (Balagopalan & Subrahmanian, 2003) and teachers in Pakistan segregating children by caste and putting lower effort into teaching lower-caste students (Tamim & Haq, 2015).…”

Ear Biometry: Protection Safeguarding Ear Acknowledgment Framework utilizing Transfer Learning in Industry 4.0

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