It was on the cards for two years before the government finally insisted on private elite schools making room for children from disadvantaged sections of society. But laying down the law hasn’t really ushered in the kind of change anticipated. Schools which are expected to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for children from poor families from nursery onwards, have not been able to meet the target set this year. In fact, none of the 31 academic districts of the state have achieved cent percent progress in filling up seats under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. In most districts less than half the seats have been filled, say officers of the education department, blaming the poor response to the RTE quota on lack of preparation.

Pointing out that the notification was issued only on April 28, they say this did not give the department enough time to mobilise the community and make a success of the scheme. “We should have been given at least six months to implement it. This would have allowed us to speak to schools and get our data right. Based on this we could have notified the number of seats that they needed to fill under the RTE quota and simultaneously carried out a public awareness campaign, telling people they could enroll their children in these institutions. But we had less than a month to do everything,” they lament.

But MLC and former vice chairman of the state legislature council, Mr. Puttanna, believes the main reason why RTE has not made much of an impact this year is because most schools are guilty of making early admissions.

“Its common knowledge that all good schools, especially the CBSE/ICSE schools, complete their admissions by January. The state government which came out with the draft notification on RTE didn’t ask any school to wait to make their admissions and then merely informed them they had to reserve seats for poor students in May. But by then all seats had been taken,” he says.

Many schools, for their part, are still apprehensive about the new scheme. The principal of an elite ICSE school feels the whole exercise has been carried out in a very undemocratic manner. “Schools which dared to say no to RTE students are now off the hook. But schools which did not are being harassed in the name of reservation. Local politicians, education department officers and others want their share of seats in our institutions and the RTE quota has come in handy for them.

If the government does not clarify things, the scheme could become another tool for blackmail,” he fears. The problems may be many, but the way forward, say academicians, is to learn from them and make sure they are not repeated the following year, when RTE will once again come into play during admissions.

‘Updated system, better administration is the need’
The tardy implementation of RTE in schools has put the education department in the line of fire and those associated with it believe it needs overhauling to make it more effective.

“When former commissioner Tushar Giri Nath tried to bring in changes by introducing new processes like evaluation of DDPs he faced stiff resistance. And although ICT has been implemented in all schools, most officials of the department have not opened up to the new technology. This is one reason why the department fails to deliver time and again,” says a retired education officer. While the state government has gone ahead with implementing RTE in schools, most education officers are not even aware of new schools in their jurisdiction, he claims.

“They don’t keep track of changing trends, international curriculum, international schools and so on. Even the list of schools prepared by the DDPIs of the city is not updated,” he adds. The time has come to infuse young blood in the administration of the education department, feel experts. “We need some good managers in the department as our schools are managed badly and courts are pulling up the government for poor management of academic issues. Even when active IAS officers take over as commissioners, the existing officers don’t allow them to implement their ideas,” says academic
consultant, Rajesh S. Pai.