Landmark Education Bill will fulfil aspiration of millions of children

It is one of the most important days in the parliamentary history of the country that landmark Education Bill has been passed in Lok Sabha.The landmark education bill which seeks to guarantee free and compulsory education for children aged between six and 14.A quarter of private school places will be reserved for poor children. It would fulfil the aspiration of the poor children whose parents have no enough income to send their sons and daughters to the public schools. The bill, passed by the Lok Sabha, will set up new state-run neighbourhood schools. It will also force private schools to reserve at least 25 per cent of their seats for poor children. Presently about 70 million children receive no schooling, and more than a third of the population is illiterate. The bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha last month. It now needs presidential assent - a mere formality to become law. Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal has rightly described the passage of the bill as "harbinger of a new era" for children to meet the challenges of the 21st century.Mr. Sibal's concern is praiseworthy when he says that the country can not afford to sending children no school. One of the chief characteristics of the Education Bill that it has made separate arrangement for the education of disabled children. The children with disabilities must be treated equally and it is a positive thing that the bill covers children with disabilities and that the government is planning to set up special schools for them. This bill provides for the inclusion of children who are disadvantaged because of disability. The government is not only setting up special schools for them but doing all it can to provide education to them in all types of schools. The bill also ends widespread practices by which schools impose admission fees on parents to guarantee their children a place and bureaucrats enjoy discretionary powers on deciding who to let in. By doing away with the practice of imposing admission fees and privilege of bureaucrats to decide who to let in, the education has been universalised in the country. And it will prove to be the greatest achievent of UPA in its second phase. The government must focus all attentions on education in the country. In recent times, it has been experienced that education is being commercialised very fast. The expensive public schools are coming up in which the parents of poor children can not afford to send. The government after the enactment of education bill must revamp the education system in schools. It must make proper arrangement for the training of teachers to teach the students well and should impart knowledge with skill to compete. Achieving universal education is one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals to be met by the year 2015. Critics of the bill, however, say it is not clear how the government plans to pay for this. Also, they say it does not cover children below the age of six and therefore fails to recognise the importance of the early years of a child's development. They say it also does little to address India's inequitable school system under which there are vast discrepancies between well-funded private schools and state-run schools with poor quality teaching staff and infrastructure. At the moment India spends a little over 3% of its GDP on education.