Gujarat Government is all set to bring back detention policy as part of its campaign to improve learning standards among the primary school children in the state. The decision to reintroduce detention policy in Government Schools that operate under RTE Act / Right to Education is expected to impact over 2.5 to 2.7 lakh primary school children studying in Classes 5 to Class 8.
Decision after Amendment to RTE
The decision to reintroduce detention policy for primary school students comes in the wake of recent amendment to RTE Act passed by Parliament in January 2019. The amendment scrapped the compulsory ‘no detention policy’ and allowed state governments to decide if they wanted to detain students for poor performance. Following this amendment, Gujarat Government has decided to reintroduce detention policy for primary students.
No Detention Policy Adversely affected Students’ Performance
Gujarat Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama announced the decision to reintroduce detention policy for the students in his budget speech last month. Announcing the decision, minister said that amendment to RTE regarding scrapping of compulsory ‘no detention policy’ was a long standing demand of Gujarat Government. He said that having no-detention policy at primary school level had adversely affected the learning standards among the students. The impact of this was also seen in the board exam results as well.
Mission Vidya
He said following the reintroduction of detention policy of the school students, the Government has also launched ‘Mission Vidya’ - a month-long campaign to provide remedial teaching to improve the literacy levels of students from standards 6 – 8 in government schools. Through Mission Vidya, the government will run remedial programmes for detained students to help them improve their performance.