A Prime Focus On The 12th Five Year Plan Of RTE

The 12th Five Year Plan, which has been delayed and likely to be released in April, is going to focus on the Right To Education (RTE) Act this time. Apart from RTE, the other key areas will include higher education and the setting up of central universities.

The director of Media-HRD Press Information Bureau Mamta Verma says that “The five year plan is still in its drafting stage. The two sectors-education and health-will be the focus this year. Under education, implementation of RTE, which had been allocated around rupees two lakh and thirty thousand crore for the last five years, will be a priority. This means, approximately around Rs.45 to 50,000 crore will be spent on its implementation annually, which is a big amount and has to be substantiated”.

There are lots of major challenges that RTE has to face. The concern for RTE is understandable, according to the annual Status of Education Report(Rural) 2011, private school enrollment is increasing in most of the states despite RTE. Since RTE came into force in 2010, the two major obstacles have been availability of teachers and setting up of neighbourhood schools. There is a shortage of nearly five lakh teachers while about three lakh teachers, teaching at the elementary level, are untrained.

As the the road-map of RTE, neighbourhood schools are to be established and improved infrastructure to be ensured as per the pupil-teacher ratio (one teacher: 30 students)- both by March 2013. The provision for training untrained teachers is to be met by 2015. According to the annual report 2010-11 (MHRD), the provisions of RTE are being implemented through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).