India passes free education bill

(Aug.05,2009):The Indian parliament has approved a landmark education bill which seeks to guarantee free and compulsory education for children aged between six and 14. The bill, passed by the lower house of parliament, will set up new state-run neighbourhood schools. It will also force private ones to reserve at least a quarter of their places for poor children. Currently about 70 million children receive no schooling, and more than a third of the population is illiterate.
The bill was passed by the upper house last month. It now needs presidential assent to become a law. India's Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal described the passage of the bill as "harbinger of a new era" for children to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The minister said the bill covers children with disabilities and that the government is planning to set up special schools for them.
The bill also ends widespread practices by which schools impose admission fees on parents to guarantee their children a place, and bureaucrats enjoy discretionary powers on deciding who to let in. Achieving universal education is one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals to be met by the year 2015.
Critics of the bill, however, say it is not clear how the government plans to pay for this.
They also say it does not cover children below the age of six and therefore, fails to recognise the importance of the early years of a child's development. At the moment India spends a little over 3% of its GDP on education.