Guwahati, July 28: A compliance audit carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on implementation of the RTE Act has found that Assam retained over 30,000 students in class VIII between 2010 and 2016 in violation of the act.

According to the report between 2010 and March 31 last year, 33,930 children who attained the age of 14 years were retained in class VIII. 

“The reason was attributed to non-completion of the elementary cycle as they were not enrolled in schools in time and in some cases, the students were retained in same classes (repeaters) due to poor performances in class (slow learners),” the report said.

Section 16 of the RTE Act envisages that no child should be held back in any class or expelled from the school till the completion of elementary education. The audit said retention of children was a violation of the act.

Assam was one of the 15 states that violated the act by retaining students. Arunachal Pradesh, another state that violated the act, retained 10,284 children in primary classes and 1,717 in upper primary classes during the period.
Citing government data, the report said among all the states of the country Assam recorded the highest dropout rate in government-run primary schools in 2015-16. It said the rate was 18.52 per cent.

Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar recently said the Centre would soon introduce retention of students in classes V and VIII with support from the states.

The report pointed out how Dispur had utilised schoolteachers in the update of the NRC in 2014-15 in violation of the RTE Act.

It said according to the act, no teacher can be deployed for any non-educational purposes except decennial population census, disaster relief duties or duties relating to elections to the local authority or the state legislatures or Parliament, as the case may be.

“In three out of the four selected districts of Assam, 1,559 elementary teachers were engaged in field verification for update of the NRC during 2014-15,” the report said. Lakhimpur, Kokrajhar, Dhubri and Darrang were the four districts selected for this purpose.

The impact of deploying teachers in the NRC update process had surfaced in a recent review meeting among the schools which recorded zero pass percentage in the class X board examinations. In the review meeting, most of the schools had categorically told education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma that their education was adversely affected because of teachers being used in the NRC update process.

Assam also cut a sorry figure in resolving complaints regarding violation of child rights. Section 32 of the act stipulates that an appeal relating to a complaint shall be decided by the State Commission for Protection of Child Right as provided under relevant provisions of the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005.

Test check in audit revealed that from 2010 to 2016 Assam received 356 such complaints but did not solve a single one. The report also said unutilised balance in the primary section in Assam was also increasing every year. The amount was Rs 12 crore in 2010-11 and over the years increased to Rs 507 crore in 2015-16.