Right to Education

In a significant development, the Right to Education (RT E) was made a fundamental enforceable legal right for children under Article 21A of the Constitution by the Eighty-Sixth Constitutional Amendment Act, 2002. India thus became one of the few countries in the world where the right to education is a fundamental right. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RT E Act) guarantees the right to free and compulsory education to every child between 6 and 14.143 However, it doesn’t encompass children between 0 to 6 years old. The RT E Act, although progressive, is not accompanied either by a well laid-out implementation mechanism of the law or by a financial memorandum. Therefore, its implementation remains a challenge because of inadequate financial allocations and lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. While the Act does have provisions stating that the local authority may take up a complaint, it ignores the fact that this very local authority is also an implementing functionary. This could give rise to conflict of interest in certain instances, which would inhibit the proper enforcement of the right to education. In order to ensure a more efficient implementation of the RT E Act, states are required to frame their own set of rules. To date, only 17 states have prepared drafts of their state rules on the Act but are yet to notify them