Government admits it has failed to meet RTE targets
HRD minister says government will push for the fulfilment of RTE’s conditions even after deadline ends

New Delhi: A week before the implementation deadline for its flagship Right to Education (RTE) Act expires, the government on Friday accepted that it had failed to achieve many of the targets of what it envisaged as a landmark measure.
At least 13 states have written to the human resource development (HRD) ministry for an extension owing to their inability to fulfil all the requirements of RTE, including the key challenge of training all untrained teachers in elementary education.
“The entire thing has not been met, it’s an open secret," HRD minister M.M. Pallam Raju< > said in New Delhi on Friday. “That does not mean we can leave the desire (of achieving RTE targets)."
In January, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which sets the social agenda of the Union government, sought an institutional audit of the implementation of the RTE programme. NAC is headed by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi< >. It had also suggested forming an inter-ministerial coordination system involving three ministries—HRD, women and child development, and panchayati raj—for better implementation of the RTE Act and an institutional audit of the 1.3 million schools to monitor and address grievances, and bring accountability to the system, Mint reported on 16 January.
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