Three years on, RTE objectives yet to be achieved

Even three years after the ambitious Right To Education (RTE) came into force, nearly 20 per cent of government schools are yet to have professionally qualified teachers, according to a study conducted by the HRD ministry.
The study for 2012-13 revealed that the percentage of professionally-educated teachers in government schools is around to 81 per cent, just one per cent up from the previous year.
The RTE Act, which came into force three years back, mandates states to have professionally-qualified teachers in all schools within five years.
The report said 26 states have implemented the continuous comprehensive evaluation process while 33 states are following the instructional hours in keeping with the provisions of the RTE Act.

The report, which goes into the factors of evaluation of RTE such as enrolment, teacher availability and infrastructure indicators, also revealed that there has been a considerable reduction in gender and social category gaps especially at the primary level.
However, the report presents a marginally better picture in terms of learning outcome vis-a-vis the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) also released recently.

It said that class V students scored 251 points in Maths and 247 in reading comprehension and environment science in a benchmark average of 250.
ASER report had stated that learning outcome in rural schools continue to remain poor with only about 40 per cent children able to read a Class-I level paragraph and just about 25 per cent in Class V able to solve a simple division.

The report shows improvement in school infrastructure during the three-year period, with percentage of schools with girls toilet facility going up to 69 per cent and percentage of primary schools with single classrooms in government schools coming down from 40 per cent to 29 per cent.