CHILD EDUCATION (Syllabus: GS Paper 2 - Social Justice)

Context: Slow progress on achieving the target of education for all set by the United Nations (UN), coupled with socio-economic pressures in many parts of the world, has widened the global educational gap in the last two years, according to UNESCO.

Key Points

• There are now 250 million children not enrolled in school, up by six million since 2021.
• Ensuring quality education for all is the fourth of the UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goals.
• A new child has to join school every two seconds from now to achieve the 2030 targets of this goal.
• This progress has to be supported by “58 million additional children, adolescents, and youth in school, and at least 1.7 million more primary school teachers trained to provide quality education”, to attain SDG 4.
• Four out of five countries have set a goal to advance teacher training and professional development

Right to Education (RTE) in India

• The Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002 inserted Article 21-A in the Constitution of India to provide free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right in such a manner as the State may, by law, determine.
• The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which represents the consequential legislation envisaged under Article 21-A, means that every child has a right to full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school which satisfies certain essential norms and standards.
• Article 21-A and the RTE Act came into effect on 1 April 2010.