Right to Education Act: Claiming education for every child
Overview
A conscious neglect of school education in the initial decades of independent India is termed by Dreze and Sen (2013) as a ‘home-grown folly’. Public services like education are key to nurture participatory growth as well as to ensure that growth improves peoples’ living conditions. However, India’s highly privatised and compartmentalised education system (largely unaccountable to the public) offers very different opportunities for various social groups and perpetuates social inequalities, instead of reducing them. Three out of four children currently out of school in India are either Dalit (32.4%), Muslim (25.7%) or Adivasi (16.6%). Enactment of the landmark RTE legislation has triggered significant improvements, but evidence shows that quality has often been neglected. While concerns regarding privatisation of education remain, RTE Act offers a first step towards an educational system in India that offers access, equity, and inclusion of all children.
Additional details
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
How to cite this resource
Citation styles vary so we recommend you check what is appropriate for your context. You may choose to cite Oxfam resources as follows:
Author(s)/Editor(s). (Year of publication). Title and sub-title. Place of publication: name of publisher. DOI (where available). URL
Our FAQs page has some examples of this approach.
