To mark the end of three years since the right to Free & Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 became operational (on April 1, 2010), 22 education NGOs and six respected educationists convened in Delhi on March 28. On the occasion, they made an appeal to the Central and state governments to shift the focus of the RTE Act from provision of inputs to measuring learning outcomes. The appeal (and its signatories) is reproduced below.

“The RTE has created a powerful vision of education for all of India’s children. Today, all states and Union territories have notified their Rules and addressed the provisions of the Act in accordance with their needs. It is now time to take the next step in fulfilling the fundamental promise to Indian children that they will truly get an education and not just access to schools. 

The next ten years will see the largest ever number of citizens in the school system at any point in Indian history (or future), and it is critical that this generation that represents the demographic dividend be equipped with the literacy, numeracy, and skills needed to participate fully in a rapidly modernising world. The only way to not fail this generation is if we make learning outcomes an explicit goal of our education policy and invest in regular, high-quality and independent measurement of learning to monitor our progress vis-à-vis this goal. And finally, we must also continue to participate in international benchmarking assessments such as PISA to track our progress as we aspire to ensure that Indian children are not left behind those in the rest of the world.”

Absolute return for kids, amitav virmani
Accountability initiative, yamini aiyar
Akanksha foundation, vandana goyal
Akshara foundation, ashok kamath
Career launcher, satya narayanan r
central square foundation, ashish dhawan
centre for assessment, evaluation & research, khozem merchant
Centre for civil society, parth shah
Christel house india, jaya george
Educational initiatives, sridhar rajagopalan
Fabindia schools, sandeep dutt
Gray matters capital, pradeep sharma
Gyan prakash, daljit mirchandani
Indus world schools, sujit bhattacharya
Katha, geeta dharamrajan
Pratham books, suzanne singh
Pratham gujarat, renu seth
Riverside school, kiran bir sethi
Stir, sharath jeevan
Teach for india, shaheen mistri
tGELF, gowri ishwaran
Thermax social initiative foundation, anu aga
Individuals: Abhijit Banerjee, professor of economics, mit
Amit kaushik, ccs board member
Arun kapur, executive director, vasant valley school
Geeta kingdon, institute of education, london university
Gurcharan das, author & ccs board member
Lant pritchett, kennedy school of government