Coming soon
Guest Lecture on Right to Education Act 2009: Barriers and Challanges
Date: 24th Oct 2018
Time: 10.00am to 11.30 am
Speaker: Dr Seema Joshi
A guest lecture was organized by Department of Home Science on “Right to Education Act, 2009: Barriers and Challanges” for the students of M Sc Home Science (HD) and B.Sc H.Sc on 24th October, 2018. The speaker was Dr. Seema Joshi, who is presently the Member of Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights. She is also the founder of Maulik Foundation which is a NGO working for women and children. She is the member in many organisation including TAABAR which is working for rehabilitation of street children.
She began her lecture with a brief introduction of Rights and why do children need rights. Then she talked in brief about history of RTE Act and its process of coming into existence in 2009. She discussed the recommendations given under different sections of this act regarding infrastructure of the school, teacher-pupil ratio, eligibility criteria for recruitment of teachers and School Management Committee.
After discussing the RTE Act she moved towards its implementation and talked about how this act is being manipulated by school managements. She also discussed about ‘No Detention Policy’ the meaning of which is completely distorted by the teachers. No Detention Policy does not mean that child cannot be failed but, it was formulated with the intension of evaluating the child on the basis of CCE (continious Cumulative Evaluation). But teachers are not skilled enough to carry out CCE in a proper way.
Since she is the member of RTE Act cell of the Rajasthan state commission, she attends workshops conducted to discuss issues and challenges in implementation of the act at the field level. She shared many of her experiences witnessed during the workshops and visit to schools where this act was getting manipulated and distorted especially by private schools.
She mentioned that government is putting their effort to bring all children in school to achieve Universialisation of elementary education. But it can’t be possible without participation of parents into education system. Although most of the schools have School Management Committees and parents are recruited as member of the committee but she discussed the reality of these SMCs.
Finally in discussion session students shared their school experiences about corporal punishment which is completely prohibited under RTE Act. Students also asked about the steps taken by the government for connecting curriculum to the real life utilization by including more practical components.
The lecture was ended with an important massage that India has many strong policy documents but still the result is negligible because there are manipulations for personal benefits at implementation level. She requested the students to contribute at their own level in changing the present scenario, as they the youth and she believes that only youth has the potential to bring change in the mindset of the society.