A Bill to amend the Right to Education (RTE) Act to abolish the ‘no detention policy’ in schools was passed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Replying to the debate in the Lok Sabha on The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (second amendment) Bill, 2017, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said that it would be at the discretion of the States whether to continue with no detention or not.

‘States will decide’

The States, he said, would decide at what level and who would conduct the examination, the Minister said. “It is a broken education system. We have to rebuild it,” he added.

Under the current provisions of the RTE Act, no student can be detained till class 8 and all students are promoted to the next grade.

The Minister said that in some of the States such as Sikkim, Kerala and Telangana, the students, who were studying in private schools, had come back to government schools.

“Teacher training, quality and accountability are most important,” Mr. Javadekar said.

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