Right to Education Act: Claiming Education for Every Child

Abstract: Educational rights are prime reality for India’s millions of children who can be rightfully termed as social categories at risk of exclusion. These children have been deprived of education of minimum quality while some of them remain even beyond the reach of formal schooling. The irony is that their educational deprivation is obtained at the backdrop of India’s most enabling constitutional guarantees, judicial and legislatures that are well-equipped to protect and uplift the pathetic existential conditions of these social groups. A conscious neglect of school education in the initial decades of independent India is termed by Dreze and Sen(2013) as a ‘home-grown folly’. 1 This study aims to investigate the challenges of the Right to Education Act, 2009 among  Primary School Teachers of Purnea district of Bihar. A descriptive survey is used in the study. The information was gathered from as many in-service teachers as possible working in primary schools of Purnea. A questionnaire with open-ended objective questions was created to investigate teachers' perspectives, challenges, and suggestions regarding the RTE Act. The study's findings revealed a significant gap between policy involvements and how they are actually perceived and implemented in the field.