Answer:

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 is a Central legislation that details the aspects of the right of children within the age group of six to fourteen years i.e. to free and compulsory elementary education, under Article 21-A inserted by the 86th Amendment Act, 2002.

This Act serves as a building block to ensure that every child has his or her right (as an entitlement) to get a quality elementary education. In fact, it also mandates private schools to admit at least 25% of the children without any fee. The Act seeks to promote child-friendly school through measures such as compliance with infrastructure and teacher norms for an effective learning environment.

Section 30(1) of the Act introduced that a child cannot be detained in any class till the completion of elementary education to prevent damage to their self-esteem, increased dropouts and increased social problems like begging and petty crimes. It was aimed at increasing Gross Enrolment Ratio.

However, recently, the Lok Sabha has passed an amendment bill to abolish the No- Detention policy. Two committees of Geeta Bhukkal and TSR Subramaniam also recommended it to be removed in a phased manner. Issues with this policy are:

♤ It leads to a situation where there remain no incentives for children to learn and for teachers to teach. This leads to students lacking required educational competence, knowledge and skills relevant to higher classes. For e.g. the number of students failing in class 9 examination has been on an increase in many States.

♤ It affects the quality of classroom teaching as well because at higher levels, teacher is unable to teach the curriculum at an expected pace due to promotion of all students with difference in capabilities and understanding.

♤ It also affects teachers’ ability to control students as teacher loses leverage over students and many government schools turn into mere "mid-day meal" providers.

♤ Fall in learning outcomes and automatic promotion of children only rolls over and postpones the problem of dropouts as seen from shoot up of dropouts in class 8 at the end of elementary stage.

In this context, the no-detention policy is being scrapped. At the same time, there are equally strong arguments against the scrapping of the no-detention policy:

♤ This will mean that the State is blaming students (many of whom are first- generation learners) for their failure to learn in class.

♤ The RTE Act made a range of other promises such as upgrading quality of teaching, regular assessment through Continous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). All these along with no-detention policy had to go hand in hand. No-detention policy does not mean no evaluation.

♤ Further, bringing back the old pass-fail system without making proper course correction in other areas may undermine the egalitarian promise of the RTE.

To conclude, detention should be resorted to only after giving the child remedial coaching and extra chances to prove his capability. Education should be inclusive and should have a common curriculum, so that all children become familiar with the basic concepts, tenets, principles and ethos of the Indian education.