The 25 per cent quota for poor students in private schools under the Right to Education Act remains only on paper due to the apathy and lack of political will of the state government. Even though the Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutional validity of 25 per cent quota in April this year, the state government has failed to implement it in the current academic year (2012-13) citing a “fund crunch”.
It is strange that the government, which is spending over Rs 3,500 crore on the fee reimbursement scheme to enable students to pursue higher education and professional courses, cannot find Rs 100 crore to implement the 25 per cent quota in private schools under the RTE. The government has been curiously reluctant to implement the provisions of the RTE which came into force two years ago, on April 1, 2010.
For the first two years it remained silent saying that there were no guidelines on implementing the Act and that the case of 25 per cent quota for poor students was pending with the Supreme Court. The court categorically ruled in April this year that private schools have to allot 25 per cent seats to poor students under the RTE and the government will reimburse their fees. In May, a committee was constituted to identify the private schools in the neighbourhood to implement the RTE quota. The committee submitted its report in mid-June, which is gathering dust with the department of school education.
The government has not made the report public, though it is said that the report has exempted elite schools offering CBSE, ICSE and the international curriculum from the RTE quota on the grounds that the schools charge higher fees that the government cannot afford to reimburse. While all private schools finished their admissions process by June-end, minister for primary education S. Sailajanath, under whose purview the RTE comes, suddenly took a U-turn in July stating that the government is still to get clarity from the Centre on its share of the amount to be paid for quota
students.