The principal of a private school in Thakurganj has been booked for allegedly physically and mentally torturing a Class 2 student who had got admission under the RTE (Right to Education) Act.
The boy’s father alleged that principal Preeti Yadav was apparently unhappy over giving admission to his son through RTE.
“She used to regularly taunt the students who got admission under RTE,” the victim’s father alleged.
“On May 5, the principal beat my son and taunted him. When he returned home, he had high fever.
“He fell unconscious a little later. We rushed him to a hospital… he is still under treatment. My son was tortured physically and mentally by the school administration and the principal,” he alleged.
SHO, Thakurganj, Vikas Rai said a case against the principal for beating the student and causing him grievous injuries, has been registered. Charges of Juvenile Justice Act (Child Care and Protection act 2015) have also been slapped on Yadav.
(The story has been published via a syndicated feed with a modified headline.)
HinduPost Note
It is abhorrent for any child to undergo humiliation and taunts because of the way they gained admission. But the flip side of the RTE issue is often buried by mainstream media. School administrators have to run around for years behind govt education department bureaucrats to get the reimbursement that is their due for admitting EWS students under RTE. Scores of budget schools have shut down due to this law, which also forces a lot of other minimum mandatory requirements that are just not feasible for schools in lower middle class/middle class localities.
It is hence no surprise that some schools are loathe to admit students under RTE, or shift the onus of bearing the RTE students’ cost of education on other parents by hiking fees for their wards. RTE has also stoked corruption in school admissions/certification – an entire ecosystem has sprung up to issue fake EWS certificates, and to allow schools to evade falling under RTE, a law introduced via Sonia Gandhi’s unconstitutional super cabinet i.e. NAC which consisted of bad-faith anti-Hindu activists like Yogendra Yadav, Harsh Mander etc. As ‘minority’-run schools are exempt from the draconian RTE, there is a rush among schools to get the ‘minority’ tag which is usually given on religious/linguistic grounds.
So a law with supposed good intentions of providing quality education in private schools to underprivileged children (which is also a tacit admission of the failure of the public school system) has ended up creating more chaos, inefficiency and corruption like almost everything the secular Republic touches.
Instead of RTE, we need to focus on two things – 1. Improve the public education system 2. Hand out education vouchers so that parents can admit students to school of their choice and pay fees in part/full via the govt.-issued vouchers.
