The Rajasthan Elementary Education Department has a good website where quite some data is available with regard to RTE. It maintains a separate Private School Portal where this data is made available.
Information regarding the following are available :
- Total number of registered (private) schools
- Total number of schools admitting RTE students
- Total number of RTE students enrolled
- Total number of schools qualifying for RTE reimbursement
- Total number of RTE category children for whom reimbursements have been made
- Total amount reimbursed.
The information is available from 2013-14 onwards. Also, the information is available under two categories – “Ele” and “Sec”. I am assuming Ele is for Lower Primary schools and Sec is for Upper Primary Schools (which also have Lower Primary).
The tables below cover only points 1, 2 and 3 from above. The goal is to look at some school related parameters and their trends.
Number of registered private schools –
| Year | Elementary Schools | Secondary Schools |
| 2013-14 | 17047 | 10414 |
| 2014-15 | 17473 | 11726 |
| 2015-16 | 18712 | 12010 |
| 2016-17 | 20307 | 13324 |
As you can see, the total number of schools has been consistently growing.
Number of private schools admitting RTE category students –
| Year | Elementary Schools | Secondary Schools |
| 2013-14 | 14869 | 8811 |
| 2014-15 | 15525 | 10143 |
| 2015-16 | 16076 | 10008 |
| 2016-17 | 15214 | 9623 |
Percentage of total schools admitting RTE students –
| Year | Elementary Schools | Secondary Schools |
| 2013-14 | 87.22 | 84.60 |
| 2014-15 | 88.85 | 86.50 |
| 2015-16 | 85.91 | 83.33 |
| 2016-17 | 74.91 | 72.22 |
Both in terms of actual number and the percentage of total schools, the schools admitting RTE category children has started to come down. The fall is quite steep in 2016-17 compared to 2015-16.
Number of verified RTE students
| Year | Elementary Schools | Secondary Schools |
| 2013-14 | 139740 | 64018 |
| 2014-15 | 216884 | 167854 |
| 2015-16 | 285756 | 220973 |
| 2016-17 | 284308 | 235202 |
The total number of RTE students being enrolled is showing an upward trend (except for a minor dip in 2016-17 in Elementary schools). This shows that in the schools that admit RTE category children, the percentage of children being admitted is probably better enforced. Therefore, even though the total schools admitting RTE children has come down, the actual number of students has gone up.
Of course, it would be interesting to know the reasons behind the dip in the total number of schools that are admitting RTE students since 2015-16. And once we have numbers for 2017-18 and later, it would be possible to verify if the trend remains southwards.
Reference: Govt of Rajasthan Elementary School Education Private Schools Portal.
Note: If you go through the link and compare the various years, you will notice a massive dip in the number of schools that have qualified for RTE reimbursement in 2016-17. I am leaving that data, and any possible cause-attribution, out of the scope of this post.
Note 2: The screenshots of the tables from the portal are available here for reference.
(This article first appeared on securecoreblog.wordpress.com and is being reproduced with the permission of the author, Hariprasad N)
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