Less than one per cent of seats were filled in schools in the combined Andhra Pradesh as against the quota of 25 per cent under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Out of 1.72 lakh seats available under this section in the erstwhile AP, only 358 were filled in 2013-14. Out of them, 310 were in rural areas and 48 were filled in urban areas. However, there has been a substantial increase as only 150 seats were filled in 2012-13, where 125 seats were filled in rural areas and 25 in urban areas, revealed a report.
The study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, Central Square Foundation, Accountability Initiative and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy to assess the implementation of 25 per cent reservation under RTE across Indian States.
RTE Act mandates 25 per cent reservation for children from economically and socially disadvantaged sections in private unaided non-minority schools.
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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 per cent.
‘Seat filling rate extremely low’
Ankur Sarin of Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad, said that the rate of filling seat in Andhra Pradesh was extremely low. “Our report carefully analyses the implementation of this provision using various parameters to better understand the challenges leading to ineffective implementation and shares potential solutions,” Prof. Ankur Sarin says.
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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) data.
The report also highlights a fair amount of inconsistency between the DISE data and data on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan website, other State websites, and even those reported as responses to RTI queries that were filed by the authors.
Yamini Aiyar, Director, Accountability Initiative says that in many States there is no clarity on how the reimbursement amount is calculated.
No clarity on fee waiver
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 other States, Andhra Pradesh has performed really well in terms of designating a dedicated authority to calculate the cost per child, and defining the timelines and process for fee reimbursement, she says.