Two chances to pass for 5th to 8th graders

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 21

The Right to Education Act’s most controversial provision of no detention is all set to end shortly with the Government today telling the Lok Sabha that it was finalising draft amendments.

The amendments will give class V to VIII students two chances to clear exams. If they fail, they will be held back in the same class. Existing RTE Act 2009 bars detention of these students. 

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“Students will get to take one exam in March and another in May. If they fail, they will stay in the same class,” HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said as the Lok Sabha passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Amendment Bill 2017 to relax time lines aspiring teachers are allowed to acquire minimum qualifications to teach in elementary schools covered by the RTE law. Minimum qualifications include Bachelors and Diploma in Elementary Education.

The Bill extends the March 31, 2015 deadline to get these qualifications to March 31, 2019. This relaxation comes in the wake of 11 lakh untrained teachers of the 66 lakh posted in government elementary schools. The original Act had laid down March 31, 2013 as the deadline. 

Javadekar also said the Government was working on ensuring teacher attendance and address the problem of proxy teachers.

He said Manipur had piloted a project where teachers are marked present only if they are in a 50 feet radius. “We plan to introduce this nationally. There is the biometric model too. Rajasthan pastes on school walls pleasing portraits of teachers that say: ‘Hamare Aadarniya Adhyapak’. So everyone knows who the real teachers are,” Javadekar added.