Child rights agencies launch nat’l campaign together

Pune: Right to Education Forum, Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) and Alliance for the Right to Early Childhood Development have come together to launch a national campaign to demand the right to quality education for all children.

The inclusion of all the children from birth until the age of 18 years, and ensuring an end to child labour are the two issues that these organisations are battling to enter the core agenda for the upcoming general elections.

We have gone to all the parties and also the known candidates, and have submitted our demands to them. We are hoping that they include these in their party manifestos. However, it will have to be seen only when they release these, Manish Shroff of Campaign Against Child Labour said.

Demands put forth in the manifesto

• Extend the purview of RTE Act from birth to 18 years, in line with the internationally recognised definition of childhood.
• Take urgent action to reverse declining expenditure on education as a share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and bring it to at least six per cent of GDP in line with the global education financing benchmarks and Kothari Commission recommendations.
• Ensure complete implementation of the RTE Act along with norms and standards in true letter and spirit and make the state accountable for its implementation.
• The government must invest in strengthening School Management Committees and community participation in education.
• Take steps to address inequality in education by moving from a multi-layered education system towards the creation of a common school system.
• Take stringent and closely monitored steps to ensure social inclusion and provision of a safe and secure school environment in all schools and Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) centres and address the specific barriers to education faced by Adivasi, Dalit, Muslim minority children, girls, children with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups.
• Ensure the total eradication of child labour up to the age of 18 years and remove the provision in Section 3 of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act 2016, which legalises child labour in family enterprise.
• Elected people’s representatives at all levels (centre, state and PRIs) to take concrete steps to uphold their commitment to universal, quality and equitable public education in a safe and secure environment until 18 years of age.
• Stop increase of commercialisation and privatisation of education and strengthen the accountability of private schools and ECCE Centres by drafting, implementing and enforcing a national regulatory framework including regulation of fees, compliance with quality norms and addressing social segregation through the growth of private provision.
• Governments must commit to strengthening grievance redressal mechanisms in instances where the educational rights of children are violated.
• Remove detention under the Right To Education Act.
• Stop mass scale closure of government schools in the name of merger and re-open those that have been closed.
• Increase the number of secondary schools at par with that of primary schools.