Right to Education Act 2009: Letting Disadvantaged Children Down?

Abstract

Despite having enormous programmes for achieving universal quality education the government did not succeed in this , as there are still large number of disadvantaged children out of school due to poor quality of education services and defects in implementation of policies by government authorities. Strong resistance of private schools and upper caste parents to reservation provided under Clause 12 of RtE Act 2009, rapid growth of private schools and the inability to achieve universal quality education shows the existence of caste discrimination in the education system. Therefore, the assumptions behind this study were; private schools were not complying with such Clause 12 of RtE for various reasons, government authorities were not properly enforcing, parents of targeted children are unaware of their rights, and disadvantaged children were unable to access private schools. This research paper is aimed to evaluate the role of the Government establishment in implementation, how private schools are dealing with the Clause 12 of RTE Act 2009 and what are perceptions of Upper and lower caste parents on effectiveness of this Clause.