Trouncing RTE

It is no surprise that the state’s department of Education was again pulled up by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in its report for the year 2015-16. The various issues raised by the CAG were in a wide area of the department’s functions especially infrastructural lapses, financial mismanagement that includes overspending in some account heads whereas collecting fees from students going against the RTE Act in some cases, commissioning of schools in areas not required, unqualified teachers and the quality of education imparted. Unfinished school buildings and schools without proper amenities that were detected in the audit though money was released points to corruption not only by the department but by the community also. In the sample survey, 40 percent of the schools had no separate toilet for girls and boys, 74.44 percent of the schools did not have safe drinking water facility, 84.44 percent of the school did not have a playground and 86.67 percent did not have boundary wall or fencing. It shows the stark picture of the complete absence of the sense of accountability even by the community because the school management committee is formed by the community of that particular settlement/village/ locality including the members from the church. Then the next anomaly was the detection of quite a few schools in the sampled districts with very low enrolment. According to the RTE Act when such cases occurs the teachers have to be redeployed and adjusted in schools where the pupil-teacher ratio is more than the specified number as per the Act. However the CAG audit found out that it was not done in the state for the last 6 years. It was detected that many teachers were redeployed to non-teaching positions in department’s offices in the sub divisions and headquarters which is against the RTE Act. The Act stipulates that a teacher posted in a school cannot be made to serve in any other school or deployed for any non-educational purposes other than the periodic census, electoral process and disaster management duties. The most serious anomaly was the quality of education itself. The state has continuously employed unqualified teachers and the relaxation criteria given to the state in 2012 have been flouted in the state. The relaxation was not permanent as it was only till March 31, 2014 and the state was supposed to conduct Teacher Eligibility Tests for final appointment within that time. The teachers who did not have the minimum qualifications were also required to acquire it within 5 years and those who were employed under relaxed qualifications were required to acquire the qualifications within 2 years . The 1900 untrained teachers targeted to be trained through Open and Distance Learning mode was also not adhered to with only 1575 enrolling for training in the first year of which only 1323 teachers got enrolled for the second and final year of the training. There is no report of how many were successful in this training. The training institutions for those holding administrative and managerial responsibilities in the department, like the State Institute of Education Management & Administrative Training (SEIMAT) is currently non-functioning. Any other section of the education department that has to do with collection of data and statistics required for assessment, management, monitoring and evaluation follows the state’s trend of inability to collect unadulterated data. In conclusion, all these anomalies paint only one big picture of the current scenario in the state, of giving higher priority to employment in the department and not welfare of the students. There are schools at every possible location in the town areas “urban-villages” of the State that are situated right next to the town areas where there are very less enrolments due to preference in private schools by parents in these areas. In contrast there are no schools in the far flung areas where schools are required as reported by the CAG. The cases of incomplete school buildings and other related infrastructure also indicate the dearth of necessity for its earlier completion which means the lack of students in those schools. On the other hand the welfare of the teachers have taken precedence over the welfare of the children and so the increasing number of unqualified teachers is no longer an issue for the department. There are teachers without students in some schools and the deployment of teachers for non-teaching assignments points to teachers wanting to stay in and around the town areas. The current mess unless tackled will slowly eat into those government schools that are performing above average at present and thereby ushering in mediocrity in quality and cynicism even by those few remaining dedicated teachers. The government, the community and also the church as a whole has to ensure that the general will is to correct this mess immediately.