BENGALURU: The State government may say no to the Union government’s proposal to revisit the “No Detention” policy, which is in practice under which a child shall not be detained until after he/she finishes elementary education.
The issue was discussed in detail in the recent CABE (Central Advisory Board for Education) meeting, where it was decided that opinions from all the states would be collected on revisiting the policy. The State government is thinking of retaining the No Detention policy.
State Primary and Secondary Education Minister Kimmane Rathnakar agreed in principle to retain the policy. Responding to a representation submitted by the Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, the Minister said the State would retain the policy.
In the representation, they said: “The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, (hereby referred to as RTE Act or the Act) introduces the ‘Prohibition of holding back and expulsion’ under clause 16 which essentially means no child admitted in a school shall be held back in any class or expelled from school till the completion of elementary education. The introduction of this clause in the Act is often questioned with the argument that this clause compromises the quality of education in government schools.”
It states further, “However, it should be clarified that Clause 16 makes no mention of any examination of the child during the course of his elementary education. Rather it states that the child shall not be held back in the same class. At the same time it should be reiterated that the Act is not against assessment of children. In fact, it introduces the concept of ‘Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation’ (CCE) under clause 29 (2) (h), with the sole purpose of assessing a child’s performance and assisting the child to perform better in subjects where he/she is lagging behind.
In a meeting convened by Rathnakar, it has been decided to retain the no detention policy upto Class VIII and to conduct a separate evaluation process to assess children’s learning abilities.