Campaign to create awareness about RTE to be launched

Updated on: Friday, November 11, 2011

The year-long 'Shiksha Ka Haq Abhiyan' campaign will be launched on Nov 11 with an appeal from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to students to study hard for achieving success in life.

The Prime Minister's message will be read out in all 13 lakh schools across the country, a copy of which has been sent to the headmasters. The day will also be celebrated as 'National Education Day'.

His message is likely to touch upon great personalities who by their dint of hard work became distinguished personalities in public life, a HRD Ministry official said.

"The Prime Minister's message could also throw light on the difficulties and challenges he had to face during his schools days in his village to acquire education," the official said.

Singh has on several occasions recollected his days as a student in his village school at Gah Begal in Chakwal district of Punjab province now in Pakistan which had no electricity and pukka roads.

The official said the Prime Minister is also expected to commit his government's support to enhancing quality of education and extending every opportunities to the children to realise their dreams and aspirations.

He said the country-wide campaign, which aims at creating awareness among people about Right to Education and their entitlement to free and compulsory education, will be launched by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal at Nuh in the backward Mewat district of Harayana.

The Prime Minister's message will also be read out at the function.

The HRD ministry hopes that a sustained campaign will change and create an interest at the community level to ensure that RTE delivers its objective.

The RTE Act came into force last year and so far 20 states have notified the rules.

Ruing that big states such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and West Bengal have not notified them as yet, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had earlier said it will be a "historic failure" if the Act is not implemented across the country.

Ministry officials said though it has been more than a year that the RTE has come into being, there is little awareness of the law and its provisions.

Delhi is one of the states which has also not implemented the Act as yet.

The law gives governments a three-year window to ensure that infrastructure and other such provisions to meet the requirements of the law.

Campaign to create awareness about RTE to be launched

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