scholarly journals The Right to Education Act: Trends in Enrollment, Test Scores, and School Quality

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 232-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manisha Shah ◽  
Bryce Steinberg

The Right to Education (RTE) Act passed in 2009 guarantees access to free primary education to all children ages 6-14 in India. This paper investigates whether national trends in educational outcomes change around the time of this law using household surveys and administrative data. We document four trends: (1) school-going increases after the passage of RTE, (2) test scores decline dramatically after 2010, (3) school infrastructure appears to improve both before and after RTE, and (4) the number of students who have to repeat a grade falls precipitously after RTE is enacted, in line with official provisions of the law.

Author(s):  
Florian Matthey-Prakash

What does it mean for education to be a fundamental right, and how may children benefit from it? Surprisingly, even when the right to education was added to the Indian Constitution as Article 21A, this question received barely any attention. This book identifies justiciability (or, more broadly, enforceability) as the most important feature of Article 21A, meaning that children and their parents must be provided with means to effectively claim their right from the state. Otherwise, it would remain a ‘right’ only on paper. The book highlights how lack of access to the Indian judiciary means that the constitutional promise of justiciability is unfulfilled, particularly so because the poor, who cannot afford quality private education for their children, must be the main beneficiaries of the right. It then deals with possible alternative means the state may provide for the poor to claim the benefits under Article 21A, and identifies the grievance redress mechanism created by the Right to Education Act as a potential system of enforcement. Even though this system is found to be deficient, the book concludes with an optimistic outlook, hoping that rights advocates may, in the future, focus on improving such mechanisms for legal empowerment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Rosnani Sahardin ◽  
Cut Salwa Hanum ◽  
Sofyan A. Gani

Using the right technique to teach writing is very important to help students overcome problems in writing. Think Pair Share (TPS) is a cooperative teaching-learning method that it is believed to help students improve their writing ability. Thus, the writers conducted an experimental study to tenth grade students at a senior high school in Banda Aceh to find out whether or not this technique could facilitate and improve the students’ writing of descriptive texts in English. The results showed that the TPS technique successfully improved the ability of students’ in writing, reflected by the post-test scores covering five aspects of writing. The progress before and after the technique was implemented can be seen in these average scores for the five aspects: content increased from 12 to 16, organization from 11 to 15, vocabulary from 9 to13, grammar from 8 to 10, and mechanics from 8 to 11 where the improvement for each aspect was 4, 4, 4, 2 and 3. Despite the results showed that the TPS technique was effective for improving the students’ mastery of organization, vocabulary and content, but less so for improving mechanics and grammar. This is probably because it is generally much easier to make improvements in organization, vocabulary and content but it requires a much longer effort with much more practice to significantly improve mechanics and grammar. Nevertheless, the writers suggest that English teachers and others can use the TPS technique to teach writing, hence some of the problems faced by students in writing can be helped and, more importantly, they can improve their ability to write English.


Author(s):  
Florian Matthey-Prakash

Chapter 5 examines the conceptual set-up of the grievance redress system created by the Right to Education Act, and analyses studies on its performance. It highlights the deficiencies of the current system, and compares it to other, more effective systems such as grievance redress under the RTI Act. The different institutions that are part of the grievance redress system are either not sufficiently independent or do not have sufficient competences to enforce their ‘judgments’. These deficiencies, as well as additional implementation issues, also translate into a malfunctioning system ‘on the ground’. The chapter also examines other grievance redress systems for different state services (for instance, the ones created by the Right to Information Act), highlighting that some of the deficiencies found in the right to education system are actually not universal.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (253) ◽  
pp. 149-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usree Bhattacharya ◽  
Lei Jiang

Abstract While the broader ambition of the Indian government’s Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act (2009) has been lauded, scholars have expressed reservations with the universal education measure. One area that has not been adequately addressed within these debates is the instructional medium. While RTE (2009) recognizes children who are “disadvantaged” as linguistic minorities, and stipulates that the “medium of instruction shall, as far as practicable, be in child’s mother tongue”, it offers little further direction. India is home to more than 1,652 languages, but only 43 languages function as instructional media. Therefore, the majority of children learn in a tongue that is not their home language, experiencing serious educational disadvantages. How this issue complicates the intent of the RTE (2009) Act remains to be explored. This article examines this gap using the theoretical lens of dis-citizenship, which is conceptualized in terms of exclusions experienced by marginalized groups. Here, we focus on those marginalized by the language of instruction. We investigate questions about language access, inclusion, equity, and rights arising from RTE (2009), within the narrative of India’s complex, hierarchical multilingualism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pfuurai Chimbunde

While the Land Reform Programme (LRP) in 2000 and beyond was camouflaged as a distributive justice schema aimed to better the socio-economic status of the Indigenous people in Zimbabwe, it precipitated educational injustices for students arising from the creation of an education landscape marked by inequitable access to education. The study, undertaken after 20 years since the inception of the LRP, sought to check the progress made thus far by the Government of Zimbabwe to enhance access to education by children of the new farmers. Informed and guided by the international normative frameworks of the right to education, of which Education For All (EFA) and the Zimbabwean Education Act (1987) are part, the case study cast in the qualitative approach, presents constructed narratives of three primary school learners and their three teachers at one purposively selected satellite school. The study finds that as much as the advent of the LRP worked to bring equal access and redress in land appropriation between the settlers and natives, a new form of injustice has resurfaced as reflected by challenges of equitable access to education.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 270-276
Author(s):  
JOGINDER SINGH

The Right to education,2009 is a historical right in India with a commitment to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14. The Haryana government has notified its rules under the title “Rules for Haryana State under Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education 2010.”The study is based on mainly secondary data. An attempt has been made to examine the government’s initiative to ensure its effective implementation and also suggest measures for the improvements. The results indicate that The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 seems to have remained on paper more not only in the Haryana but in other states also.


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