The no-detention policy in schools is being scrapped. Under the no-detention policy, which is part of the Right to Education Act, 2009, all students from Class I onward must be allowed to reach Class VIII without detention at any level. This means no student from Class I onward can fail regardless of his academic performance. Education experts are divided on the issue but a majority of them seem to believe that it has deterred the learning process. After all, how can a student be serious in his studies if he knows he will surely pass regardless of whether he has heeded his teachers and tried to learn anything, or not? It is a confidence-booster of sorts – “I will pass” syndrome – in the negative and academically disastrous sense. But no, says an IIM-Ahmedabad study. The study, led by researchers Ankit Saraf and Ketan S. Deshmukh and based on an alysis of tiol data for 10 years from the Annual Survey of Education Reports, seems to suggest that there is nothing so wrong about the no-detention policy as it is perceived to be by opponents. It says the policy has done less harm than it is actually accused of. “Implementation of the no-detention policy has not systematically lowered the learning levels of students. It has done less harm than it is accused of,” says the study titled “To Fail or Not to Fail?” and submitted to the parliamentary standing committee and the panel drafting the country’s new education policy. It will be recalled that last year, the Central government introduced an amendment bill in Parliament to allow States to detain a child at the end of Class V, Class VIII, or both. The bill is now with the parliamentary standing committee on human resource development (HRD).