Législations et politiques nationales sur la scolarité payante ou gratuite – L'Inde

The following item is taken from www.crin.org on April 6 2010:

INDIA: Right to education launched

A landmark law which makes education a fundamental right for children has come into effect in India.
It is now legally enforceable for every child to demand free and elementary education between the ages of six and 14 years.
Indian PM Manmohan Singh said enough funds would be made available to ensure that children had access to education.
An estimated eight million children aged between six and 14 do not currently attend school in India.
Mr Singh said that the government was committed "to ensuring that all children irrespective of gender and social category have access to education".
Recalling his own childhood, Mr Singh, a qualified economist, said: "I read under the dim light of a kerosene lamp. I am what I am totally because of education."
"So I want that the light of education should reach to all," Mr Singh added.
'Building block'
Analysts say the law marks a historic moment for India's children.
"It serves as a building block to ensure that every child has the right to guaranteed quality elementary education. The state, with the help of families and communities, has a legal obligation to fulfil this duty," said Karin Hulshof, India representative of UN children's fund Unicef.
Recently, the World Bank announced two education projects worth a total of $1.05bn for India - one of which is to boost the number of children enrolling in and completing elementary school.
The World Bank says the number of children reportedly enrolled in elementary education in India increased by 57 million to 192 million between 2003 and 2009.
More than two-thirds of this increase took place in government schools.
The number of children out of school declined from 25 million to 8.1 million during the same period, the World Bank says.

CRIN note:

CRY (Child Rights and You), a child rights organisation in India, had been running a nation-wide campaign called “Do what is right” prior to the Act's entry into force urging all citizens to demand amendments to the recently passed Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009.

The campaign demanded provisions in the Act for children below six years and over 15 years old.

The campaign also called for minimum standards for teachers, school infrastructure and basic facilities including drinking water, toilets, classrooms, and teacher-student ratios as well as a clear provision for an allotment of ten per cent of India's GDP to education.

Read more about the campaign here.

[Source: BBC]

Further information:
Delhi Court hears first petition on right to education (6 April 2010)
On Monday, Delhi's High Court heard the first petition on the right to education. The Court ordered a private school to readmit a class 6 student who had been expelled because she had failed exams. 

Dissent over children's education bill (25 August 2009)

Older posting:

The “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009” has been notified, after receiving the assent of President. Article 21-A, as inserted by the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, provides for free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right in such manner as the State may, by Law, determine. Consequently, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, has been enacted by the Parliament. The Act received the assent of the President on 26th August, 2009.

Decades of popular mobilization to make primary education free and all-encompassing in India yielded results after the turn of the millennium. The Ministry of Education reported that school enrolments reached 100% in 2005 for the first time in the country’s history. Reaching all children by primary education is gradually becoming a reality, 57 years after India attained political independence. In 1966 the Education Commission (known as ‘the Kothari Commission’) recommended exactly that, education for all children. It estimated that 6% of GNP for education would be necessary to attain that goal. Neither that budgetary allocations to education nor its universalization have yet been attained but are seen – finally – to be within reach.

 One of the signposts was the 93rd Constitutional Amendment, which transformed the right to education from a directive for state policy into an individual right. It was passed by unanimous votes in the Lok Sahba in 2001 and by Rajya Sabha in 2002. It took five years to get that short and simple amendment adopted by parliament. It says: “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such a manner as the State may, by law determine”. After education was affirmed as each child’s right, it took four more years to specify fiscal obligations of the central government, governments of individual states and the local authorities. The impetus came from the UPE (United Progressive Alliance) government in 2004. It prioritized education. A 2% surcharge on all taxes was introduced so as to generate additional funds for education. They did not come close to a 18% increase in military expenditure at the same time but the central government increased its financial contribution to education from a tenth to more than one third of the total. 

In 2006, a judicial challenge aimed to hasten the translation of the right to education from the law on the books to the living law. The Supreme Court has issued notices to the central and state governments regarding their obligation to ensure education for all children as the Constitution requires. The incentive was anguish because some 97 or 98 million school age children were still labouring. The case was lodged by a coalition of non-governmental organizations, which have argued that elimination of child labour and free and compulsory education were two sides of the same coin. This necessitates integrating children’s rights in policy-making and overcoming disjointed policies on education, labour, children and human rights.

 The background to the constitutional change in 2001-2002 was accumulated societal anger at a sequence of governments which failed to universalize primary education. The original constitutional pledge, at independence, was to ensure free and compulsory education for all children within ten years. It took 42 more years just to change the Constitution. The Supreme Court facilitated this process by declaring in 1993 that the state’s failure to provide education for all children was contrary to the Constitution.

 Increased fiscal allocations to education are needed to narrow the gap between parallel systems of poor public education for the poor and fee-charging private schools for those who can afford them. 

That formula mobilized “financial resources from the community and correspondingly reduced the financial responsibility of the state”. In the 1990s, 75% of school children received free education, 51% in urban and 85% in rural schools. The completion of five years of schooling by all children is planned for 2007 and it should be attained through a “zero rejection policy so that no child is left out of the education system”.