Universalisation of Secondary Education
Integration of Culture Education in School Curriculum
Regulatory Mechanisms for Textbooks and Parallel Textbooks Taught in Schools Outside the Government System
2.1 The Committee wishes to record at the outset briefly the background of the enactment of the Constitution (86th Amendment) Act 2002 which has, in a way, reopened the main issues for the National Education Policy and preceded the reconstitution of the CABE by the present Government of India.
2.2 In 1993 the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement on the Unnikrishnan vs State of Andhra Pradesh case, read Article 45 of the Directive Principles of State Policy along with Article 21 of the Fundamental Rights.
The Court decreed that the right to education was to be construed as a fundamental right flowing from the Right to Life itself and Article 45 (defining the relevant age-group as 0 to 14 years as it then existed) was to be seen only as providing the parameters within which the right to education was being defined (presumably for operational needs for the time being).
2.3 According to this judgement, the right to life that was to be protected by the State under the Constitution of India was the right to a life to be lived with human dignity, which implied that every child's right to life included a basic right to education. This, from the day of the judgement, became the law of the land as determined by the Supreme Court of India and should be seen as holding independently of the 86th Amendment unless and until it is struck down.
2.4 The GOI, in response to this as well as several other Supreme Court decisions, had constituted the Committee of State Education Ministers under the chairpersonship of the Union Minister of State for HRD (Education) Shri Muhi Ram Saikia in 1996. Following the unanimous recommendation of 1997 of the Saikia Committee the GOI began to take the necessary steps towards an Amendment of the Constitution that eventually led to the passage of the Constitution of India (86th Amendment) Act 2002.
2.5 The 86th Amendment has made education from 6-14 years of age a Fundamental Right of the children of India. However, in the view of this Committee, while the span of 6 to 14 years of age serves to define broadly the parameters of regular schooling at the elementary stage of education, the 1993 Supreme Court judgement stands on its own. This Judgement had defined the operational parameters of the right to education flowing from the right to life as "up to 14 years of age" and not "6-14 years of age". The decision to make education a Fundamental Right for 6-14 years has only partially fulfilled the requirement of the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court of India.
2.6 This Committee therefore recommends that alongside the 86th Amendment the Government of India bring in another Act to protect the fundamental right to life of the child in the form of the right to live in a civil society with full provision by the state of both primary health needs and early educational care for children up to 6 years.
2.7 If this is not done, the rationale of the truncation of the child's life span into 0-6 (where the child appears not to have any fundamental right to life and education) and 6-14 (where the child is now accorded rights to both life and education) will come into question.
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