States have misinterpreted the No Detention Policy (NDP) and it is being implemented incorrectly, hence the policy won’t serve the purpose for which it was incorporated in the RTE Act, former Minister of Human Resource and Development (HRD), Kapil Sibal, told The Hindu .
The amendments to the Right to Education Act (RTE), which introduced the NDP, were passed in Parliament during UPA-II in 2009 when Mr. Sibal was the HRD Minister.
Eighteen of the 22 States, who submitted their recommendations to the Centre, have now asked for the policy to be scrapped.
“States interpreted the policy to mean that no matter what the students does – say, doesn’t attend school – then also he or she should be promoted. That was not the intention of the policy at all,” Mr. Sibal said.
He explained that the objective of the policy was to give extra care to the weak children and not to destroy their confidence by making them feel “useless”. It was intended to give a psychological boost to weak students.
Mr. Sibal said that there was opposition to the policy even in his time, and some States conveyed that there is a problem.
The ministry then constituted a committee to figure out the issues.
“But in this process, if the weak students are detained, then you are going to destroy a lot of lives,” Mr. Sibal said.
“If something is not happening on the ground as it was contemplated, the mindset of the people implementing it should change. The future of children should not be destroyed,” he added.
A major argument against the NDP has been that students lose the incentive to study, and parents don’t send their children to school.
“If we have a detention policy, will the students study? Those who don’t want to study will not study. Plus, the mindset of parents, who don’t want to send their child to school in expectation that their child will regardless be promoted, will not change. How will detention help? They will still not send the child to school,” he said.
Mr. Sibal set aside the alarming fail percentage of Class IX, which were released by the Delhi government, as an old phenomenon and not a consequence of the No Detention Policy.
“In fact, data doesn’t support what people are saying. There has been an upsurge in both the quality and number of students passing out of this system. The pass percentage in Class XII has improved,” Mr. Sibal said.
‘Need quality teachers’
According to the former minister, the problem ultimately lies with the inadequacy of quality teachers.
On initiatives of the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government, including Chunauti 2018, Mr Sibal said: “Good, they should implement it. If they have done their experiments, let’s see. At least let them do something. So far, we haven’t seen much happening in Delhi apart from confrontation with the Centre. Nothing is happening on the ground.”
Objective of the policy was to give extra care to the weak children, not
to promote them
no matter what
