Less than one per cent of seats were filled in the schools in the combined Andhra Pradesh under the mandatory 25 per cent reserved seats as per the Right to Education (RTE) Act.
Out of 1.72 lakh seats available under this section in the erstwhile A.P., only 358 were filled in 2013-14. Out of them 310 were from rural areas and 48 were filled in urban areas. However, this has been a substantial increase from the 150 seats that were filled in 2012-13, where 125 seats were filled in rural areas and 25 were filled in urban areas, revealed a report.
The study was done by the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, Central Square Foundation, Accountability Initiative and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy to assess implementation of RTE 25 per cent reservation across Indian states.
RTE Act mandates 25 per cent reservation for children from economically and socially disadvantaged sections in private unaided non-minority schools. The report highlights that while there were 16,722 private schools in the combined state, only 15 had admitted at least one student under the provision of the Act, thereby making the school participation rate in this provision as low as 0.09 percent.
Prof. Ankur Sarin of Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad, said that the rate of seat filling in Andhra Pradesh is extremely low. “Our report carefully analyses the implementation of this provision across various parameters to better understand the challenges leading to ineffective implementation and shares potential solutions,” he says.
The report provides a comparison of fill-rate of RTE Act 25 per cent quota seats across private schools in 28 states, based on the analysis of District Information System for Education (DISE) 2013-14 data.
The report also highlights a fair amount of inconsistency between the DISE data and data on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan website, State websites, and even those reported as responses to RTI queries that were filed by the authors.
Yamini Aiyar, Director, Accountabilility Initiative says that in many States there is no clarity on how the reimbursement amount is calculated. In many instances, schools and parents are unclear if the fee waiver applies only to the school tuition or includes expenses such as books, stationery and uniform.
Private schools also face the problem of delay in receipt of reimbursement from the government.
However, unlike many states, Andhra Pradesh has performed well in terms of designating a dedicated authority to calculate cost per child, and defining the timelines and process for reimbursement, she says.
