Great efforts in Raipur to change RTE

Raipur’s efforts to check the poor implementation of The Right to Education Act (RTE) in the city have helped children from underprivileged families have a fair chance at a good education, which is also free of cost.The RTE Act reserves 25% of seats in private and government aided schools for children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds – a fantastic provision that opens the doors for inclusive education.But as promising as it sounds, the on-ground implementation of this provision has suffered, thanks to corruption. When IAS member, OP Choudhury, took charge as the District Collector in Raipur last year, he started evaluating its effectiveness in the capital city.“We found that many schools were indulging in malpractices to avoid the intake of poor children. They showed fake admissions to avail government grants, claimed they did not receive applications for RTE category, showed favouritism in allotting the reserved seats, and hijacked the seats from the truly deserving.The District Collector and his team decided that they will use technology to build a truly transparent system for RTE admissions.

A centralized system was developed that would allot seats to the nursery, Kindergarten 1 and Kindergarten 2 classes based on an algorithm and not on human whims and fancies. The online system gave people a clear view of how many seats were available and in which schools. Parents could also apply to multiple schools of their choice for their children.Last year, though the records aren’t completely believable owing to the falsifications, an estimated 2800 seats were allotted through RTE. With the new system, the admissions have more than doubled.Starting this academic year, from the nursery till Class 8, these children will be provided eleven years of education – completely free of cost! This comes in where the annual fees in the private schools in Raipur come up to anywhere between Rs. 30,000 to 1.5 lakh per year.The government will reimburse the schools for an amount of Rs. 7000 per child every year.