The Union Education Ministry has made changes in the Right to Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE Act 2009) for schools. After this change, schools can now fail children who fail in class 5th and 8th. This amendment in the rules has been made five years after the Right to Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE Act 2009) was amended to include this reform in 2019. Earlier, this Act did not allow the states to conduct “regular exams” and fail students of class 5th and 8th.

Opportunity to take the exam again after two months

As per the revised rules, states can now hold regular exams for Classes 5 and 8 at the end of the academic year and if a student fails, they will be given additional instructions and given a chance to re-appear for the exam after two months. If a student fails to meet the promotion requirements in this exam as well, they will be detained in Class 5 or Class 8.

These instructions were given to the school

However, the RTE Act emphasises that “no child shall be expelled from any school” until he or she completes Class 8. Principals are required to maintain a list of failed children, “identify gaps in learning” and “personally monitor the provision of special inputs” for children who pass these classes.

Changes already made in these states

States like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka and Delhi have already decided to debar students who fail in Class 5 or 8. However, Karnataka’s attempt to hold regular exams – essentially, public exams – for classes 5, 8, 9 and 11 was quashed by the Karnataka High Court in March 2024. However, some states like Kerala are against holding exams in classes 5 and 8.

Earlier there was a ban

The original version of the RTE Act had a “no-detention policy” that put a nationwide ban on the practice of sending primary school children back to the same class if they failed in an exam. This essentially meant that children could not be detained in the same class until Class 8, even if they had failed. Many education activists saw the “no-detention policy” as a key part of ensuring that students do not drop out of the school system. However, many states were not in support of it. At the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) held in 2015, 23 out of 28 states called for the abolition of the “no-detention policy”.

States had argued that the policy did not prepare students for board exams and increased the number of students failing in Class 10. In March 2019, Parliament passed an amendment to the RTE Act, allowing states to hold regular exams in Classes 5 and 8 and scrapping the “no-detention policy”.