Centre ends ‘No detention policy’ in govt schools

New Delhi: The Centre has scrapped the ‘no detention policy’ for classes 5 and 8 students who fail to clear year-end exams. This will allow schools to fail students who do not clear the yearly exams.

According to a gazette notification, if a child fails to fulfill the promotion criteria, he or she would be given additional instruction and opportunity for re-examination within a period of two months from the declaration of the results.

"If the child appearing in the re-examination fails to fulfil the promotion criteria again, he shall be held back in fifth class or eighth class, as the case may be. During the holding back of the child, the class teacher shall guide the child as well as the parents of the child, if necessary, and pro-vide specialised inputs after identifying the learning gaps at various stag-es of assessment," the notification said.

However, no child would be expelled from any school until the comple-tion of elementary education, said the Ministry of Education. The notifi-cation would be applicable to over 3,000 schools run by the Central gov-ernment, including Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas and Sainik Schools.

A senior official said that following the amendment to the Right to Edu-cation Act (RTE) in 2019, already 16 states and two Union Territories have done away with the no-detention policy for these two classes.

"Haryana and Puducherry have not made any decision yet while remain-ing states and UTs have decided to continue with the policy," a senior official said.