(THE NEWSMAN OF INDIA.COM)
“Special story” by (Shaikh Umar)

Raipur Administration sets extrarodinary example in Implementation of RTE, makes over 6000 poor childeren to study in prestigious schools. Administration of Raipur has set extraordinary example by it’s honest efforts that had simply changed the life of poor students. Under the supervision and restless strive of a young IAS Officer O P Choudhary present Collector of Raipur district the implementation of The Right to Education Act (RTE) in the city have helped children from underprivileged families have a fair chance at a good education, which is also free of cost.

As per the norms RTE Act reserves 25% of seats in private and government aided schools for children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds – a fantastic provision that opens the doors for inclusive education.

However yet implementation of this provision had suffered due to lack of will to enact it. Ever since O P Choudhury, took charge as the District Collector in Raipur last year, he started evaluating its effectiveness in the capital city.

Normally schools aviod to facilitate poor children under this RTI act. They show fake admissions to avail government grants,

Taking it as a challenge to serv the sociaty at large O P Choudhary thoroughly gone into the deep and detail its implimentation The recorded data of RTE admissions was completely fudged as it was not known that how many children actually got admissions through RTE. It was all malpractices that was compromised the future of many poor children who could otherwise have got a chance at good education. Choudhury sound commited to change this forever so that the every child gets an equal opportunity at education.

The District Collector and his team decided that they will use technology to build a truly transparent system for RTE admissions.

A centralized system was developed that would allot seats to the nursery, Kindergarten 1 and Kindergarten 2 classes based on an algorithm and not on human whims and fancies. The online system gave people a clear view of how many seats were available and in which schools. Parents could also apply to multiple schools of their choice for their children.

Starting this academic year, from the nursery till Class 8, these children will be provided eleven years of education – completely free of cost! This comes in where the annual fees in the private schools in Raipur come up to anywhere between Rs. 30,000 to 1.5 lakh per year. 

The government will reimburse the schools for an amount of Rs. 7000 per child every year.

The system, with its centralized database, now has a complete view of RTE admissions across the city and holds the private and aided schools accountable for the RTE admissions. This is a complete shift from the manual admission process that was marred by malpractices.

To sustain the robustness of RTE implementation, a tracking mechanism will also be introduced to monitor the attendance and progress of the children. Realising that adapting to new environments would not be a cakewalk for the children, the District administration is also seeking the help of volunteers to provide special community-based tuitions.

These tuitions will also be offered to government school children. Raipur is also working towards improving the quality of education in government schools by converting 100 government schools into smart schools.