Revisiting a Decade of Right to Education Act 2009: Is Quality Education a Reality?

Education

The Right of Child to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) was enacted by Indian parliament in 2009 and came into effect on April 1st, 2010. The Act is considered to be the realisation of a decade long demand for universal education in the country. It aims to ensure quantitative aspect as well as qualitative aspects like enrolment, school facility and standard education to improve elementary education in India. This paper tried to evaluate progress of selected aspects of the RTE Act after a decade of its implementation, using Unified District Information System for Education (U-DISE) and Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) data. It is found that there is remarkable progress with respect to Gross Enrolment Rate (GER), Net Enrolment Rate (NER), Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR), Annual drop-out rate, Retention rate, Gender Parity Index (GPI), and school facilities. It is suggested however, improvement be made in public expenditure on education and school facilities to realise quality universal education.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.