RIGHT TO EDUCATION-ACT 2009- EMPOWERING "SCHOOL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE"

Right to Education Act-2009 is a powerful Act introduced in 2009 but has come into effect in December 2010. This Act provides free and compulsory education for all the children under the age of 14. Every school irrespective of Private or Government Sector should reserve 25% for the poor and underprivileged children of its total students. They shall receive free education without making any discrimination with other children who are studying in the school.

We made constant effort to make the RTE Act a successful one with our limited time and space. In order to make this Act effective at grassroots we decided and planned to empower the School Management Committee (SMC) who is responsible for the entire management of the school. The first strategy that we applied was that to get the list of SMC-members. Then, we planned a meeting with them in their respective villages and in this meeting we shared about RTE-Act and the role-responsibility of the SMC members for effective and qualitative education of the children. The result was that positive because very many schools did not cooperate with us to provide the SMC list. We have found a lot of mismanagement and anomalies in Midday meals. We have also found that the SMC meetings which would take place every month are not taking place rather the School Principal frequently make changes and signatures.

With our intervention the following results are seen in the villages

1. Regular SMC meetings are taking place in 62 villages.
2. SMC members became aware of their rights and demand for regular sittings.
3. We organised One day seminar on RTE-Act in this direction.

SEMINAR ON 'RIGHT TO EDUCATION 2009' (RTE)

A seminar on Right to Education Act-2009 was organised at J.P Hall in LCS in view strengthening the School Management Committee (SMC). This was conducted due to the demands from the SMC members from different villages to have an interface meeting with the government officials for the transparent functions of the School.

We had done a survey on the functioning of SMC which was presented to the participants. The survey brought out the following points:

• The consent of each member of SMC is not asked for before they published the list.
• Very many member do not know their Role-responsibility.
• The SMC meeting in every month at grassroots not taking place.
• The School principal and the President of the SMC are aware of the functioning of the SMC.

Mr.Maharntrnath Yadav the Basic Education officer was invited for the seminar and he denied the entire survey report because he argued that the entire civil society organisation wanted to spoil the image and effort of the Government and want to accuse that the government is corrupt. He did not cooperate with the seminar and quit the place. But we continued with the seminar. Some of the SMC members and principals pointed out that this is the way the government machineries function. They too expressed that they all face lot of obstacles and oppositions from the government sector.

Finally we ended the program deciding to have, follow up meeting/programs at the grassroots. There were 75 Participants consisting of School Principles, teachers, SMC members and LCS Staff members.