ARTICLE TWENTY ONE-A of RTE Act-2009 makes education free and compulsory education for all the children in the 6-14 age groups. Our government is pumping a large amount of funds under the Act to increase the enrolment of students but the student’s learning ability has not at all improved primarily because of lack of creativity among teachers.

Recently UN sponsored study of 30,000 students of 5 States namely Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand with some startling facts which are as under:

30 % class 5 students can’t read textbooks meant for third grade.

40 % class 2 students can only read works meant for Class 1.

70 % class 3 students were able to write alphabets dictated to them, a task meant for class 1

20 % children are first generation school goers.

Half of children don’t have reading material at home.

Children whose home language is different from the school learn less.

Not only the students even the availability of the primary school teachers was also evaluated by asking questions from Class 4 and there were fair number of teachers who even failed to answer them correctly.

Unless there is a proper monitoring of the RTE Act Scheme, the purpose is completely defeated. The good/ trained teachers should be only appointed/ engaged not the ones without fair knowledge appointed by offering bribes or with political pressures.