New Delhi: This is perhaps the biggest challenge of the Right to Education. RTE promises one teacher for every 30 primary school students in the country.
Right now, most states don't even come close. Though there are exceptions, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
On the ground this translates into a huge gap even by modest estimates. RTE has to provide teachers for 18.6 crore primary school students.
So we are talking about, 62 lakh teachers.
And so, the biggest expense for RTE is recruiting new teachers and training. And with it, a big fat increase in salary payments.
Says Professor R Govinda of National University of Educational Planning & Administration:
''In Kerala, they already have lots of infrastructure so they'll need less money. But in Bihar there's huge backlog, so they will need much more.''
Professor Govinda's team has to work out a financial formula for all states, also model guidelines, about how to implement Right To Education.
This is where the number crunching is happening. They've worked out some estimates, which they have listed here but they really have a crunch of time. They will have to tell the government within the next two months.
The only silver lining: The estimates prepared 4 years ago was for 19 crore children. The decline in population growth now means RTE is dealing with 40 lakh less children.
Hence, costs have sharply reduced.