The Right to Education Act is exciting. But more for the next steps that it suggests than for the explicit promises it contains today. The Act does not yet guarantee an education, and challenges to its implementation go beyond the current headline debates about finances. 

The new Act provides an opportunity to many private education providers to participate in the overall development of the country by including a larger section into the ambit of organised education and also provides an opportunity for government schools which haven’t been utilising their capacities, to pull up their socks.

The plethora of education related reforms on the anvil such as the Right to Education Act, creation of the National Commission of Higher Education and Research and a national accreditation authority need close scrutiny.a

If RTE is to become a success story, the central and State governments must address these issues with more seriousness so that equitable standard education can be provided in a hate-free, congenial, and progressive learning atmosphere in schools across the country. 

 The Right  to Education Act will fumble and bumble through many an obstacle, some inherent and some deliberately created, but a beginning has been made.

While the government is working on rules to set up public private partnership schools as a means to see how it can increase private sector involvement in providing education to the underprivileged on the other, it is all set to virtually nationalise elementary education in the country through the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

The real issue with the implementation of the RTE Act  is not only to do with money, but with the ability of the government to turn around the system. Providing funds to state governments is no doubt a necessary precondition, but it is not sufficient to realise the goal of universal elementary education.