The Right to Education (RTE) Act was enacted in India in 2009 with the goal of ensuring quality education for children. Under this, the students up to class-8 were automatically promoted to the next class and were not failed or detained.
However, now the Central government has made an amendment in the RTE Rules, 2010, under which a provision has been made to conduct regular examinations for students of class 5th and 8th. This amendment allows detention of unsuccessful students, changing the “no-detention” policy.
Students who fail in the 5th and 8th class exams will no longer be promoted to the next class. The Central government has abolished the ‘no detention policy’ on Monday. Earlier, under this rule, students who failed were promoted to the next class.
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According to the new notification of the government, the students who fail will be given a chance to take the exam again within 2 months. If they fail again, they will not be promoted, but will study again in the same class in which they were studying. The government has also added a provision that such children up to 8th will not be expelled from school.
No-detention policy is already abolished in 16 states. The new policy of the central government will affect more than 3 thousand schools including Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas and Sainik Schools. 16 states and 2 union territories (Delhi and Puducherry) have already abolished the no-detention policy. According to the Ministry of Education, school education is a state subject, so the states can take their own decision in this regard.
In 2016, the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) suggested to the Human Resource Development Ministry to remove the ‘no detention policy’. CABE said that due to this policy, the learning level of students is falling.
Under the no detention policy, teachers did not have adequate resources to evaluate students. In most cases, students were not evaluated at all. Less than 10% of schools across the country were found to have teachers and infrastructure as per the policy. The policy mainly focused on increasing the enrollment of students in elementary education, while the level of basic education kept falling. Due to this, students became careless about studies because now they did not have the fear of failing.
