Despite funding woes, some progress

The State already has a headstart vis-a-vis other states on the formation of School Management Committees, that are the monitoring agency for RTE at the school level . The existing School Development and Management Committee (SDMC) will function as the School Management Committee under the RTE Act.

However, the SDMCs currently do not extend to private aided and unaided institutions. “SDMCs will be extended to private aided schools, while the existing Parent Teacher Association(PTA) in private schools will function as School Management committee”, an SSA official said.

Under the RTE Act, the State government is to establish a school within a walking distance of one km of the neighbourhood for classes I to V, and three km for classes VI to VIII.

Towards this, the SSA is planning to launch a school mapping exercise which will identify all children, including children in  remote areas, children with disability, children belonging to disadvantaged groups, and those belonging to weaker sections of society. SSA has decided to use a GIS-based  system to collect this data from field surveys.

Karnataka already has a State Commission for Protection of Child Rights(SCPCR) to receive complaints and look into violations under the RTE Act. However, a State Advisory Council, which is to be chaired by the Primary and Secondary Education Minister, is yet to be formed.

Moreover, the State has missed the deadline on a host of other issues. For instance, as per the Right of Children  to Free and Compulsory Education Rules, 2010(Central), the State government is yet to estimate the teacher requirement, and also to notify the sanctioned strength of teachers to schools. The State is also yet to compute the reimbursement of per-child expenditure, which is supposed to be paid by  the State government to schools for enrolling children from poor and weaker sections of society.

SSA officials maintain that these are smaller issues in light of the larger funding issues,and most of these will be sorted once the draft rules have been approved  by the government.