Parliament approves a New Bill that abolishes the 'no detention policy'

Guwahati: A new bill to amend a law of abolishing the 'no detention policy' till Class VIII is being approved by the parliament on Thursday. The benefit of this bill is that from now on the schools will be allowed to fail its students instead of passing them forcefully without any eligibility.

However, when Rajya Sabha approved the bill through a voice vote, the approval of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Bill, 2019 created an uproar in the parliament. As a mark of protest against the approval of the bill the left parties even staged a walkout as well. Before the Upper House, the same bill was approved by the Lower House on July 18 last year.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, further adding to the context of the bill and the discussions related to it, said that as 25 states in the country were already demanding the right to change the "no detention" policy, this decision of approving the bill has been taken.

As per this Bill, the states will get the power of taking its own decision as to whether no detention needs to continue or not. The union minister further added that the Bill has come into existence as a comprehensive evaluation of students was not happening and this to make this possible, the Standing Committee has approved the Bill unanimously.

This has also been assured by Javadekar that the passage of this Bill will not lead to an increase in dropout rates in schools. But this bill also needs to be applied as at times it can be seen that a particular student sometimes is not eligible to study in an upper class and perhaps he needs to be retained in the same class more than a year for a better understanding of his lessons. Sometimes a Class V student does not know the mathematics of Class III and in those cases, such students should be given proper time and attention to catch their lessons before moving onto a higher class.

According to this Bill, there will a regular examination of class V and VIII and if in such examinations, a child fails, then he or she shall be given an additional opportunity for re-examination in two months' time. Hence, this must be added here, that the Bills is hoped to bring a positive change in the attitude of children towards their lessons.

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