RTE Act heavily underfunded: CRY

Prominent child rights body CRY welcomed the Right to Education Act but noted that it was heavily under-funded.

Prominent child rights body CRY on Tuesday welcomed the Right to Education (RTE) Act but noted that it was heavily under-funded.

Based on earlier government studies,Child Rights and You (CRY) had suggested for keeping aside 10 per cent of GDP as resources for implementation of the Act.

According to CRY,there was no mention of it in the RTE which stated,”It is not possible to quantify the financial requirement on this account at this stage.”

The NGO said this was not true.

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The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) Committee report of 2005 is the latest publicly available estimate of how much it would cost to implement quality education for all children. This plugs the required spending at Rs 4.36 lakh crore over six years,CRY’s Communication Manager Priya Zutshi said.

“The more we delay investments,the more would be the amount required to fill the backlog of under spends. This can be seen by comparing the Tapas Majumdar Committee’s 1999 estimate on the funds required to ensure elementary education of eight years with the Financial Memorandum to the Constitution (93rd) Amendment,” she said.

The Committee recommended an additional investment of Rs 1,37,600 crore over a 10-year period to bring all out of school children to schools and enable them to complete the elementary stage,which in 1999 amounted to 0.78 per cent of the GDP then,CRY pointed out.

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