The sheer absurdity of the no-detention policy till Class 8 will hopefully be corrected with states being accorded permission to detain students in Class 5 ~ the conclusion of the primary stage ~ and then again in Class 8, which marks the transition point from middle to senior school. HRD minister Prakash Javadekar’s statement signals a welcome deviation from the Right to Education Act which makes it mandatory to ensure automatic promotion till Class 9… with no evaluation whatsoever for the better part of school life. In many or most schools, especially those run by state governments, there is no praxis to evaluate what has been taught or to assess what the students have assimilitated, if anything.

The fact that 25 states have already agreed to withdraw the “no-detention policy” reaffirms the inbuilt opposition to a breathless provision of the RTE Act. In West Bengal, from one dispensation to another and cutting across party lines, the authorities are seemingly in favour of promotions… with no questions asked. Both the advancement of learning and assessment will be taken care of with the overwhelming majority of states set to revert to the pass/fail construct. The minister has been remarkably forthright to admit that the “no-detention policy has led to deterioration in the quality of education”.

The proposal to give the student two chances to clear the Class 5 and 8 exams is reasonable enough just as the provision for “remedial classes” is geared to help students who cannot easily attain the benchmark. However, this ought not to be confused with the booming business of private tuition. Schools have been given the responsibility to smoothen out the transition to the extent possible. It is fervently to be hoped that the amendment to the RTE Act, now before the Cabinet, will be cleared with urgent despatch.

A logical objective of the changes that are on the anvil is to improve the quality of school education. Towards that end, the HRD ministry plans to notify the “learning outcomes” in the refashioned RTE Act. Not that the provision on the impact of education is not integral to the “flagship legislation”; close to a decade after the Act came into effect, the feedback on the “learning outcomes” is yet to be notified.

Happily, the data will now be advanced to parents as well. Clearly, it is a three-pronged approach towards school education, one that involves teachers, the taught and the parents no less. Teachers will be made accountable and responsible, and this duty towards the profession makes it essential to notify the “learning outcomes”. At the end of the day, however, the chief merit of the RTE amendment is that the no-detention policy is set to be junked.