The section 4 of RTE Act (2010) provides for admission of children above six years of age who are first admitted school at “age”-appropriate class rather than “learning”-appropriate class. However, to implement this provision, the Act provided for optimal arrangements for remediation of learning deficits and to bring them to their appropriate grade level for mainstreaming.
While all the primary schools run by Municipal Corporation of Delhi and State Government, without exception, are religiously following the first half of the provision –admitting children into “age” appropriate class, they barely provide for remediation classes.
The consequences—’catastrophic’ for the child, the very child whom the act wanted to benefit.
The child, most often from nearby rural areas, who happen to come to urban areas, already coping up with the migration process and other issues, got labelled as “nalayak, duffer, idiot, “the child who cannot read” in the class and continues to be so, till he/she is automatically passed on to the next class as per the section 16 of the Act. The child loses his/her self-esteem completely, often hit by the teachers for not doing tasks, for which he is never taught, and a life is ‘destroyed’ for ever by own adults in the society, who were paid and made responsible to protect him/her.
I meet these children every day, sad or rebellious, trying to running away from school, taking to drugs or to streets just to cope up with the situation they have been put to. We are losing future Steve Jobs and Einsteins, as no one cared to look what children are capable of.
Each and every-one person in our Society, the authorities responsible for delivering of education, and the New Education Policy 2019, must address this big gap and take effective actions to resolve the solution.