The Ministry of Education Wednesday informed the Supreme Court that it is in the process of drafting rules prescribing the “method and manner for admission” of children from economically weaker sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups to neighbourhood schools, as per the Right to Education (RTE) Act.
The ministry’s Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) constituted a committee in February to draft rules for the implementation of Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act. The section provides for 25 per cent of entry-level seats in private schools to be reserved for students from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups.
The move followed a sharp observation by the Supreme Court in January, which labelled the implementation of Section 12(1)(c) of the RTE Act as “ineffective”.
In its order, the Supreme Court had noted, “Our concern is about the effective, rather, ineffective implementation of the mandate under Section 12 of the Act. We have to ensure admission of at least 25 per cent of class strength in unaided schools with children of weaker and disadvantaged groups. This is certainly a national mission. Effective implementation of the statutory policy will be transformative…,”
The court called for rules and regulations prescribing the method and manner by which children of weaker sections are to be admitted in neighbourhood schools, adding that without such enforceable rules, the statutory policy under section 12(1)(c) would be a “dead letter”.
The process of finalising the rules is likely to take approximately three to four months, the ministry said in the affidavit, requesting a four-month extension to comply with the Supreme Court order.
The ministry said the committee will frame rules for schools for which the Centre is the appropriate government under the RTE Act: schools established or controlled by the Centre, and Union Territories (UTs) without a legislature.
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The committee includes government officials from the ministry, and from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan. Going by the minutes of the committee’s meeting held in February, the rules that the Centre frames “may also guide States/UTs as model rules/regulations”. In states and UTs with a legislature, the state government is required to ensure implementation of the RTE Act and frame rules accordingly.
The ministry stated in its affidavit that it is actively engaged in drafting the rules, but the “process of compliance is inherently complex and consultative in nature…requiring inputs from all states and UTs, coordination with statutory bodies such as NCPCR and advisory councils, policy alignment across jurisdictions”.
The ministry also wrote to all states and UTs in February asking them to comply with the court’s order.
Systemic barriers to entry
The Supreme Court order was in a case in which the petitioner approached a neighbourhood school in Maharashtra for admission under the RTE Act in 2016, but the “school did not respond”.
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“However, in order to ensure that this situation shall not revisit parents like the petitioner again and again, we considered it appropriate to take up the case for precedent making and decided to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of the procedures for complying with the mandate of Section 12,” the court noted, adding that it had then appointed senior counsel Senthil as the amicus curiae to assist the court.
The amicus had then brought to the notice of the court “the inaccessibility of 25 per cent of class strength in a neighbourhood school to children belonging to weaker and disadvantaged groups”, pointing to issues including digital illiteracy, language barriers, a lack of help desks to assist parents, a lack of information about the availability of seats, and an absence of transparency in the admission process.
In January, the court referred to Section 12 of the RTE Act as having “extraordinary capacity to transform the social structure of our society”, adding, “Earnest implementation can truly be transformative…We have held that ensuring admission of such students must be a national mission and an obligation of the appropriate government and the local authority.”
