Extend RTE to minority institutions: NCPCR report

Contact Counsellor

Last Updated12/08/2021

National Commission for Protection of Child Rights called for the Right To Education (RTE) Act, 2009 to be extended to include minority institutions.
As per NCPCR, majority of such institutions were violating constitutional norms mandating admitting more students from minority communities.
NCPCR also backed reservation for students from minority communities in such schools finding a large proportion of non-minority students studying there.

In 2002, the 86th Amendment to the Constitution provided the Right to Education as a fundamental right.
The same amendment inserted Article 21A, which made the RTE a fundamental right for children aged between six and 14 years.
The passage of the amendment was followed by the launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a central government scheme implemented in partnership with the state governments that aimed to provide “useful and relevant, elementary education’’ to all children between six and 14 years.
Government subsequently brought the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which centres around inclusive education for all, making it mandatory to include underprivileged children in schools.
Specifically, Section 12(1)(c) of the Act provided for 25 percent reservation of seats in unaided schools for admission of children from economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups.

As opposed RTE, Article 30 of the Constitution states the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions.
This was done with a view to provide opportunities to children from different religious and linguistic minority communities to have and conserve a distinct culture, script and language.
Subsequently, in 2012, through an amendment, the institutions imparting religious education were exempted from following the RTE Act.
Later in 2014, Supreme Court declared RTE Act inapplicable to schools with minority status with the view that the Act should not interfere with the right of minorities to establish and administer institutions of their choice.
The Commission's objective was to assess the impact of this exemption of minority educational institutions from various guidelines that are mandatory for non-minority institutions.
The Commission is of the view that the two different sets of rules – Article 21A that guarantees fundamental right of education to all children, and Article 30 which allows minorities to set up their own institutions with their own rules and Article 15 (5) which exempts minority schools from RTE – as “creating a conflicting picture between fundamental right of children and right of minority communities’’.

Many children who are enrolled in these institutions or schools were not able to enjoy the entitlements that other children are enjoying since they belong to an exempted minority institute.
There occurred detrimental effects of the exemption
On the one hand there are schools, which are admitting only a certain class of students and leaving underprivileged children out of the system becoming what the Commission has called “cocoons populated by elites’’.
As opposed to this, other types of minority schools, in particular madarasas, have become “ghettos of underprivileged students languishing in backwardness’’.
Students in madrasas which do not offer a secular course along with religious studies – such as the sciences – have fallen behind and feel a sense of alienation and “inferiority’’ when they leave school.
Only 4.18% of total students received benefits such as freeships, free uniforms and books, scholarships, etc. from school.
There has been surge in number of schools applying for minority status certificates after the 93rd amendment was brought in, with more than 85% schools of the total schools securing the certificate in the years 2005-2009 and later.
The Commission believes this took place as schools wanted to operate outside the legal mandate to reserve seats for backward classes.