HT: Schooling should start later, proposes education bill: April 24, 2008 | Education - News Articles

Schooling should start later, proposes education bill...Chetan Chauhan New Delhi

THE CENTRAL government has finalised a bill that proposes to fix the minimum age for admission to preschool at three years and 10 months.

The draft Right To Education Bill, which will be put up for Cabinet consideration in May, will also protect parents and children from screening by schools and prescribes fines in case of violation.

Prepared by the Human Resource Development Ministry, the Bill says the admission age for Class I should be five years and 10 months before beginning of the academic year.

The admission age for preschool would be three years and 10 months.

In Mumbai, the age for admission to preschool and pre-primary has not been fixed by the state government. But typically, preschools admit children between two and 21/2 years and it's three years for pre-primary (junior KG). For Class 1, the age fixed by the state is five years, at the start of the academic year in June.

The Bill, meant to implement the Right to Education guaranteed by the Constitution in 2002, shields parents from arbitrary admission rules.

If any school is found subjecting parents or children to screening for admission, a fine of Rs 25,000 will be imposed. A repeat offence will invite a fine of up to Rs 50,000. If a school is found guilty of taking capitation fee, the fine will be up to ten times of what it charged.

The school has to follow the laid procedure for admission at any cost. Any violation that results in a deserving child not getting admission would invite a fine of up to Rs 10,000. This fine can be imposed on the government servant responsible for implementing the RTE law too.

The draft law empowers the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights or any other authority designated by the state government to impose the prescribed fines. At the national level, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights will monitor implementation of the law.

Although education is a state subject, the HRD ministry believes all states would implement the law, as the Centre would only then share their financial burden of implementing the law.

The ministry has estimated that cost of implementing the law till 2015 would be Rs 2,28,000 crore. The ministry is willing to bear up to 90 per cent cost of implementation of the law if the states commit to bear a cost equivalent to their highest expenditure on elementary education in the past five years. However, the final fund-sharing formula will come from the Planning Commission.

The draft has also framed a set of norms for private schools on teachers' qualification, student-teacher ratio and infrastructure among others. Failure to comply with them could result in the closure of the school. It strictly prohibits teachers from taking private tuitions but allows their deployment for election duties, conducting Census and for disaster relief.

AGE LIMIT

1 The Bill says the admission age for Class I should be 5 years and 10 months before beginning of the academic year.

2 The admission age for preschool would be 3 years and 10 months.

3 In Mumbai, the age for admission to preschool and pre-primary has not been fixed by the state.