Uttar Pradesh will become the first State in the country to implement the Right to Education Act 2009 that calls for free and compulsory primary education to children in the age group of six to 14.
“U.P. will be the first State in the country to implement the RTE Act, which will ensure proper and adequate education to the children,” State’s Education Minister Dharm Singh Saini said here. The Secretary of basic education had been directed to initiate process for the implementation of the Act, he said.
The government will focus on teachers, financial resources, and additional classrooms in schools in the first phase of its implementation, the Minister said yesterday.
The State will require over Rs. 14,500 crore to implement the Act for imparting free primary education to children, officials said adding that the department will make efforts to motivate children working in roadside eateries, railways stations, bus stands and other places to enrol in schools. “To attract children to schools, it had been planned to provide them food, books and even clothes,” they said.