On A Loose End

Education for all is a buzzword in almost all the countries in the world. In India too it has been gaining prominence for a while now and in Aug 2009 the government finally passed the Right to Education bill which guarantees free and compulsory education to all children between six and fourteen years of age. But there are two glitches and major ones at that. First is the fees being charged by the schools. Besides the state sponsored schools, which have a common fee structure across the board, other schools are not governed by any common criteria. The unaided schools can charge as they like irrespective of the facilities available. The well to do people can afford most of these schools and are anyway sending their kids to reasonably good schools, hence they are not the ones to really benefit from the Right to Education bill. They can benefit if the fees are standardized and maybe then they can send their kids to schools which thus far were beyond their reach. For example the Internation...