The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act was passed in August 2009 — a momentous decision, if decades too late. Since last April, when it started functioning, the state has been required, by law, to provide a neighbourhood school that meets a minimum standard within three years. The act mandates a whole range of measures to upgrade the number and quality of schools, like specified teacher-student ratios, making sure...

Even as India celebrates an impressive jump in the literacy figures in the past decade, a staggering eight million children are still out of school. Worse, 21 per cent of the teachers at the primary level are without adequate qualification and as many as 9 per cent schools have only the one teacher. Releasing the achievements in the first year of implementation of The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory...

Social activist Swami Agnivesh phoned Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, briefed him on his travel plans, and then embarked on a trip to the three villages allegedly burnt by the police in Dantewada. But he still could not get there. Along with his co-travellers, two teachers of 'Art of Living', he was physically obstructed and abused by a crowd on Saturday morning at Dornapal town, roughly 50 kilometres short of the...

Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...

For several months now, Punjab government schools have not received money for the mid-day meal scheme. teachers have been spending from their own pockets or buying rations on credit to feed the children. The Education department has attributed the delay in payment to non-release of funds by the Finance department. In Bakhtra village in Sangrur, teachers say they are buying food because the people who send their children to school are very...