MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT (DR. SHASHI THAROOR)
(a) to (e):The Schedule to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 lays down the norms for the number of teachers for classes I-V and classes VI-VIII, the norms for school buildings including barrier free access, separate toilets for boys and girls, drinking water facility, kitchen shed, playground and fencing/ boundary wall, the minimum number of school working days/instructional hours in an academic year, the minimum number of working hours per week for teachers etc. As per Section 19(1) of the RTE Act, the norms and standards in the Schedule shall be fulfilled within a period of three years from the enactment of the Act. All States/UTs have made progress in this regard. As per the DISE 2011-12, 60.52% schools had Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) as prescribed, 67.74% of the schools had girl’s toilets, 87.63% had boy’s toilets, 94.57% schools had drinking water and 53.57% had ramps. Several States/UTs need to recruit additional teachers and also rationalize teacher deployment to meet the pupil teacher norms per school, while a few States have school infrastructure requirements to complete.
In order to enable States/UTs to comply with norms stipulated in the RTE Act, Rs.61906.50 crore of Central Government funds have been released to the States/UTs so far, under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
