If India is an aspiring society, education is perhaps the quickest vehicle of social mobility. Right to Education (RTE) is a supplyside intervention by the government that will make education cheaper and, in the process, every child will get a chance to be educated. But an approach that focuses on availability of schools, getting children to the classroom and getting them taught by reasonably well-trained teachers is not enough. Retention...
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‘Over 80,000 street children deprived of education’
-Express News Service More than 80,000 street children in the state’s urban areas are not going to school and around 25,000 of them are from Ahmedabad, according to a survey conducted by the state government for the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Gujarat primary education secretary R P Gupta, when contacted, said, “Recently as a part of the implementation of the RTE Act in the state, the Sarva Shiksha...
More »An open shame
-The Business Standard Moving forward on sanitation will require big ideas National shame” is how most people, including some senior government functionaries, often refer to the pervasive practice of open defecation. Yet, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), launched in 1991 with the noble objective of providing access to hygienic toilets for all by 2012, receives only scant attention from the government. The latest assessment indicates that as many as 22 states will...
More »No real lessons learnt by Wilima Wadhwa
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), in effect since April 2010, was a much debated piece of legislation, which, not surprisingly, came under attack from various quarters. Proponents of ‘low-cost’ Private schools felt that it imposed an unnecessary burden in terms of infrastructural norms on schools. Since 2010, Assessment Survey Evaluation Research (Aser) has reported compliance on many RTE norms, such as those related to school...
More »How Maoists are disrupting lives in Bihar
-Rediff.com The last six to seven years of the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar has not seen any significant increase in Maoist violence, which nevertheless continues to take a toll of lives and government property. According to figures compiled by the state police headquarters, in 2008, the Maoists destroyed three government buildings, blasted railway tracks at six places, besides two private buildings, torched five JCB machines used in road construction and 12...
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