RTE Act will take 3 more years to show results: Sibal

Faced with teacher shortage and other infrastructural hurdles, the Government has said the ambitious Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act will take at least three more years to show results.

"It (RTE Act) is going to take three years at least. This is not something that is going to bear fruit tomorrow," HRD Minister Kapil Sibal told PTI.

Many hurdles have to be overcome for effective implementation of the Act as the states don”t have the necessary "wherewithal and infrastructure", he said.

The Act provides for free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years.

Recently, some states had approached the Ministry seeking relaxation of teacher qualification norms under the Act due to shortage of teacher training institutes.

Section 23(2) of the RTE Act provides a time frame of five years for ensuring that all teachers in elementary school are trained and within this period they need to acquire professional qualification.

At a meeting of the state education ministers here on June 8, it came into light that there are over seven lakh untrained teachers in the country, the largest number of them are in Bihar, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

Moreover, of the total number of untrained teachers, around 5.48 lakh are at primary level and 2.25 lakh at upper primary level.

Sibal, however, said the feedback received about the willingness of the states to implement the Act has been "very positive".