Schools in India can once again detain students if they fail their exams

• On the first day of the Monsoon Session, Indian lawmakers passed an amendment to the Right to Education Act which cancelled the “no-detention” policy.
  
• The amendment enables schools to detain students between Class 5 and 8 if they fail their exams. It also reintroduces exams in elementary schools.
  
• Under the provisions of the 2009 act, detention was banned and all students between Class 1 and 8 were allowed graduate to the next grade.
  
  

Almost every aspect of daily life in India is peppered with exports from the West such as multiple-lane highways, glossy billboard advertising, progressive taxation and the K-12 educational system. The latest addition to the list is the time-worn concept of detention.

On the the first day of the Monsoon Session of the Parliament, the Indian government got down to business by passing a bill for the amendment of the Right to Education Act. Under the current provisions of the act, all students between Class 1 and 8 graduate to the next grade without having to pass examinations.

The amendment allowed for the cancellation of the “no-detention” policy in Indian schools, enabling administrators to detain students between Class 5 and 8 if they fail their exams. However, rather than making it binding, the implementation of the policy is up to the discretion of state governments.

A far-reaching measure but a good one?

The amendment also calls for the reintroduction of exams for students in elementary and middle schools, comprising classes 1 to 4. The minister for human resource development, Prakash Javadekar, said that the absence of examinations translated into a lack of accountability.

Around 180 million students in more than a million schools across the country are expected to be affected by the legislation. Students will only undergo detention if they fail an exam twice and aren’t able to keep up with the average learning levels for their class. Instead of being held back, they will be allowed to re-appear for an exam after a few months of detention.

A significant proportion of students around the country usually lag behind in English comprehension and arithmetic, as per findings from Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report. However, while the amendment is aimed at improving learning outcomes, it really doesn’t target the crux of the problem. Having to sit for an exam or stay back in school does not necessarily teach a student to think.

It’s well and good to test students at a young age and hold them back in the event that they fail their exams, but the real problem in Indian schools is not the absence of exams or detention, it’s the methods of teaching, the inadequacy of teacher training programmes, the focus on rote-based learning and conversely, the lack of focus on critical thinking. And the solution requires more than just a quick fix to a bill.