Bring back No Detention Policy

Right to Education

Parliament of India recently passed an amendment to the Right to Education Act, 2009. This amendment scrapped the much talked No Detention Policy and left it to the individual states to decide whether they want to detain their students in class 5 and class 8.

This amendment makes provisions to take a retest within 2 months if a child fails the exam. After the retest if he/she again fails, the Act leaves it to the states to decide what they want to do with that child. No Detain policy was one of the critical pillars of the revolutionary Right of children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009.

What is RTE Act?

In 2002, parliament amended the constitution and added a clause 19(A) which made Right to Education a fundamental right. So in 2009, government came up with RTE Act to provide free and Compulsory Education to all children.

Salient Features of RTE Act:

1. The government shall provide free and compulsory education to all children aged between 6 and 14 years.

2. There shall be 25% reserved seats in all private schools for children belonging to Economically Weaker Sections. The cost of their education will be burdened by the government.

3. National commission for elementary education shall be instituted to supervise the implementation of RTE Act.

4. Government shall make effort to achieve a fixed Student-Teacher ratio.

5. No child shall be detained in any class if he/she fails the exam. The concerned child shall be automatically promoted to upper class.

6. There shall be improvement in the infrastructure of schools in every 3 years.

7. The act lays down norms and standards for quality education.

8. The state shall provide well-trained teachers to all schools.

9. If a child has not been admitted to a school in the 6 years of age, He/She should be admitted to a class appropriate of his/her age.

What is No Detention Policy?

Section 16 of the Right to Education Act prohibits schools from detaining any children i.e. no children shall be held back for failing an exam. This is known as No Detention Policy or No Fail Policy.

Recently the government has taken a regressive move in scrapping the No Detention Policy. NDP had become a revolutionary tool in improving the school dropouts significantly.

But we have gone one step backward by removing NDP. The conventional way of thinking has always hailed a child responsible if he/she fails the exam. But what we are ignoring is that a child's outcome is affected by a number of factors. In my view a child has very little or negligible role in his/her educational outcomes.

A child fails because the system has failed him/her by not providing well-trained teachers, adequate infrastructure, well-designed curriculum, etc.

There is not a single research which links the degradation in the students' educational outcomes with the no detention policy. In fact thousands of research suggest the other way round. Detention affects the children's psychology badly. Holding a child in the same class for one or more years doesn't improve the child's learning outcomes in any way rather the child discontinues his/her studies.

As per various government and non-governmental organisations' data, the school dropouts rate are severe in case of socially backward classes. This reversal of No Detention Policy will hit them even more badly. As many of the students belonging to this community are economically weak as well if they get detained for a year or more, they are most likely discontinue their studies to ease the financial burden on their family. This will widen the already existing inequality in the society.

Recent data suggests only 10% of schools have implemented the RTE Act. The government has completely failed in implementing the RTE Act in all fronts and now wants to pass the blame to children's shoulder to hide its own fault.

Those who are in support of scrapping the No Detention Policy put Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) as an evidence of degradation of learning outcomes in students. But RTE has never denied assessment of students' learning outcomes.

Rather, it has a very beautiful and scientific way of evaluation called Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation(CCE). In this method a child will be evaluated regularly, and some special efforts shall be made to improve his/her learning outcomes on the basis of feedback. But the government has failed to implement CCE in schools.

Another aspect of bringing no detention policy was to relieve students from the enormous amount of pressure they go through due to fear of the exam. No detention policy has addressed the suicide issues among students in someway.

Retaining a child in a class for another year will be an economic burden on both the government and his/her family. Study shows if a child gets education of one more class, it will have a significant impact on the GDP of the country.

Our country is still behind from many nations in terms of Government expenditure on education. Currently, India just spends 3% of its GDP on education while the Kothari Commission had suggested the government to spend 6% of its GDP on education.

As a student myself I strongly feel that if proper educational environment will be provided across length and breadth of this country then every child of our country will strive to excel in their own speciality.

In a country where 1 lakh schools are run by single teacher and majority of teachers are very poorly trained, using exam as a tool of pressure and fear is a grave injustice to millions of children.