Background 

• The 86th Constitution Amendment Act, 2002 requires the State to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 seeks to give effect to this Amendment under which all children between the ages of 6 and 14 years have the right to elementary education (class 1-8) in a neighbourhood school.
• The Section 30 (1) of the RTE Act states that a child cannot be detained in any class till the completion of elementary education.
• In recent years, two expert committees-Geeta Bhukkal (2014) and TSR Subramanian (2016)- reviewed the no-detention provision in the RTE Act and recommended it be removed or be discontinued in a phased manner.
• As per the amendment bill, regular examination will be held in Classes 5 and 8 and if a child fails there is a provision to give her additional opportunity to take a re-examination within two months. If she fails again in the re-examination, the relevant Central or State Government may decide to allow schools to detain the child.

Recently, in the monsoon session Lok Sabha passed the amendment to The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (second amendment) Bill, 2017 to abolish the ‘No- Detention’ policy in schools.Parliament has passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Bill, 2018, with the Rajya Sabha approving it on Thursday. 

The Lok Sabha had already passed the bill seeking to further amend the Right to Education Act, 2009 to abolish the no-detention policy in schools.  No student can be detained up to class 8th under current provisions of the Act.  As per the amendment, it would be left to the States to decide whether to continue the no-detention policy.

Replying to a discussion on the Bill, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar assured the Rajya Sabha that no child will be excluded from school in case he or she fails. He said such children will be provided two-month remedial teaching to perform better in another examination to be conducted by their schools. 

The Minister said 25 states favoured abolishing the no-detention policy. He said even the parents supported the move as learning outcomes of the students have been poor. 

Features :- 

• The Bill seeks to amend the Right to Education (RTE) Act to abolish the “no-detention” policy in schools. Under the current provisions of the Act, no student can be detained up to class VIII.
• As per the amendment, it would be left to the states to decide whether to continue the no-detention policy.
• The bill provides for regular examination in classes V and VIII, and if a child fails, the amendment bill grants a provision to give her or him additional opportunity to take a re-examination within two months. Such children will be provided with two-month remedial teaching to perform better in the re-examinations. If the students still do not pass the exam, the state government may decide to detain them.

Arguments against No Detention Policy :

• No incentives for children to learn and for the teachers to teach: there is no provision under RTE Act to ensure objective measurement of learning outcomes through criteria such as attendance, test scores or examinations at the end of every class and thus automatic promotion reduces incentives for both children and teachers.
• Children become non-serious, inattentive to studies and irregular in attendance: for many students the Mid Day Meal is the only incentive, thus though No detention policy resulted in significant increase in enrollment, there has been little or no improvement in academic standards or quality of education.
• Students lack required educational competence, knowledge and skills relevant to higher classes: thus their poor performance further enhances in every subsequent class. Moreover, promoting laggards drags down the standard of the whole class and handicaps the teacher’s ability to teach the curriculum at the expected pace which is unfair to the majority of the students in the class.
• Increases the pressure and tension on the child: Failing to ensure that child learns fundamentals of language (mother tongue) and basic arithmetic in primary classes increases the pressure and tension on the child and she may start drifting away from regular schooling system.
• Reduction of dropout rate is an artificial construct and illusion created by No detention policy: Automatic promotion of children only rolls over and postpones the problem of dropouts as seen from shoot up of dropouts in class 8 at the end of elementary stage.
• Number of students failing in class 9 examinations has been on increase in many states: In Delhi, for instance, the number of repeating students as a percentage of total students enrolled in Class 9 rose from 2.8% in 2010 to 13.4% in 2014, thus resulting in many states demanding a review of no detention policy.

Arguments for the No Detention Policy :

• Detaining children at the elementary level damages their self-esteem and give them a permanent inferiority complex: The social stigma associated with “failing”, has deeply damaging effects on the psyche of the child.
• Detention leads to increased dropouts and rise in number of social problems: Fear of failing in examinations and being detained has a detrimental effect on curricular learning for children. Detention leads to children dropping out of school and taking to vagrancy, begging and petty crime. On the other hand, keeping children in school prevents a host of social problems, including juvenile delinquency and child marriage.
• Detention makes a child repeat entire syllabus of the class: However, instead of detaining and repeating the same whole material again for another nine months, weaker areas of the child can be selectively targeted to cover the gaps in two or three months.
•  Learning as a continuous process: Learning takes place in a continuum and any pass or fail categorization at a particular point of time is a narrow simplification and educationally invalid.
• Issues with poor and vulnerable children: In rural areas and among below poverty line families, educational awareness is missing which often result in late admissions in the schools. In other cases, children miss school for long periods due to poverty, illness, engagement in child labour and thus lag behind in their studies, performing badly in the examination. Detention will only aggravate these weaknesses and encourage them to drop out and remain unschooled forever.
• Steady rise in the GER at the elementary level for the marginalized sections of the society: for both boys and girls, as well as for Scheduled Castes, Tribes and other marginalised sections since the coming into effect of the no-detention policy. In a deeply fragmented society such as India, this is a significant gain which should not be reversed.

Way Forward :

• Education should be inclusive and should have a common curriculum, so that all children become familiar with the basic concepts, tenets, principles and ethos of an Indian education.
• Detention should be resorted to only after giving the child remedial coaching and at least two extra chances to prove his capability.
• As recommended by TSR Subramanian committee if a child again fails to clear the examination, she should also be given other opportunities of pursuing her education through a vocational stream so that she can demonstrate her abilities and competencies elsewhere.
• Advances in technology must provide an additional ‘augmentation’ avenue to help the slow-learner child makeup for the lost ground.
• Simultaneously other significant areas such as teacher training, quality and accountability mechanisms must be improved in a holistic manner.