PM to write to children about RTE

PRIME MINISTER Dr. Manmohan Singh will himself address the children of this country through a letter that is to be read out in each of the 13 lakh elementary school on the occasion of National Education Day on November 11, 2011, as part of the effort to generate awareness about the Right to Education (RTE). This will also mark the launch of the government’s unique year-long community mobilisation and public awareness programme to bring every child in the country under RTE. The Prime Minister’s letter is to be read out by the Principal on November 11, 2011, during the school assembly in the presence of children, teachers and other dignitaries. The letter, with a covering letter from the Minister for Human Resource Development, is being mailed to every elementary school in the country.
The campaign, called ‘Shiksha Ka Haq’ (Right to Education), is the first of its kind in the history of social awareness campaigns in the country. It is expected to involve over two lakh volunteers and hundreds of community-based organisations that will run door-to-door campaigns until November 11, 2012, helping schools to become RTE-compliant by March 31, 2013, the deadline for states to implement the law.
The PM’s involvement in the campaign makes it even more special. His letter, which is in the process of being posted to principals, is intended to encourage children, their parents and the 60 lakh teachers in the elementary sector to make extra efforts to realise RTE. The letter will be translated into 14 Indian languages to cover every geographical region.
Through the campaign, which will work at the level of community, media, parents and teachers, the government seeks to convert all elementary schools into “RTE schools” by 2013. “Over the next year, we will work through two lakh volunteers to help each school draw up its RTE agenda until 2013. The idea is to take the right where it is intended considering its awareness is still very low in the poorer and rural belts. We have focused far too much on urban areas and on 25 per cent reservation for disadvantaged children in private schools. We must now take the law far and beyond the cities and see that its true potential gets unleashed,” according to Vinod Raina, member of the National Advisory Council on RTE.