On 25th July 2018, the Lok Sabha passed a bill to end the ‘no detention’ policy in schools for students of classes 5 to 8. Talking on The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said that the need was to rebuild the education system of India and that the presence of ‘no detention’ policy was leading to a poor education system.
Referring to the no-detention policy in the Act, HRD Minister Javadekar said: “schools have become only schools for mid-day meal as education and learning are missing”. Replying to the debate in the Lok Sabha on The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (second amendment) Bill, 2017, Javadekar said that it will be at the discretion of the states whether to continue with no detention or not. The states, he said, will decide at what level and who will conduct the examination, the minister said.”It is a broken education system. We have to rebuild our education system,” he added.
Under the present provision of the RTE Act, students are promoted automatically to higher classes till class 8. This is one of the key components of the RTE Act which came into force on April 1, 2010. A key component of the RTE Act, the no-detention policy unveiled by the UPA government came into force on April 1, 2010, with the intention of ensuring that every child aged between 6 and 14 received school education. However, for the past few years, concerns have been raised about the negative impact of the policy on the academic performance of the students. After holding consultation with states in the Central Advisory Board of Education meeting last year, it was decided to give states the right to decide whether they want to have a no-detention policy or not. The move will allow states to evolve their own policy of detention from Class 5. This requires amending the RTE Act.
Many states, especially Delhi, have been vocal about the flaws in the no-detention policy that has affected the quality of education.