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...

Schools affiliated to international boards are on a collision course with the government over implementing the Right to education (RTE) Act, which requires them to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for poor students. The schools, which are affiliated to boards such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge International Examinations (CIE), are governed by the rules of their own boards. The government is yet to frame any regulations to...

Many work in unscientifically built mines, employing crude methods and risking their lives The mines in Hazaribagh district are manned mostly by children aged between 7 and 17 Exposure to dust and coal particles has left them with respiratory problems Javir Kumar, 14, works in illegal coal mines, each a “rat hole,” 10x10 foot and 400 foot deep, where a mere slip of the foot will plunge one to a certain death. A large...

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...

A 13-member fact-finding team that visited Chintalnar, Morapally, Timmapuram and Tadmetla villages of Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh has found that the police claim that they had an encounter with Maoists in the jungles of Dantewada during March second week as “a hoax and far from reality.” “We have been inside these areas for two days, only to see that there was no ‘encounter' with Maoists as claimed by the police, which...