The amendments to the Right to Education Act 2009 brought about by the Union government, scrapping the no detention policy, goes against the spirit of the Act, General Education Minister V. Sivankutty told the Assembly on Wednesday (February 12, 2025). As per the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Rules, 2024) issued as a gazette notification in December 2024, annual public examinations have been made compulsory for classes 5 and 8 also, failing which a student can be held back in the same class for the next year.
Students who fail in the annual examination will be provided an opportunity for a retest, failing which they will have to continue in the same class. Mr. Sivankutty said that the State government follows an inclusive policy of providing all the necessary support for academically weak students to raise them to the next level, rather than filtering them out.
According to the minister, at the national level, only 63.8% of the students who join class 1 manage to reach tenth standard, while in Kerala 98.6% of students reach tenth standard. The number of students who drop out at the national level comes to over 8 crore.
Published - February 12, 2025 02:46 pm IST
