NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha passed an amendment to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Amendment) Bill, 2019, on Thursday changing the provision of ‘no detention’ till Class VIII. Students can now be detained in classes V and VIII in case of unsatisfactory academic performance. The Lok Sabha passed the Bill in July.While the demand for doing away with the ‘no-detention’ policy was raised by 25 states to tackle “learning deficit”, educationists claim that this will lead to a jump in the number of school dropouts and eventually will be catastrophic for children, especially those coming from the underprivileged background.The new provisions, if adopted by the state governments, will empower the schools to deny promotion to students in classes V and VIII. However, these students will get a chance to improve their performance within two months.Although human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar assured Parliament that the passage of the Bill won’t lead to increase in dropout rates, many parliamentarians and leading educationists are not happy. Calling the decision “punishment for children”, professor Janaki Rajan of Jamia Millia Islamia said, “This terrible decision by the government will affect children adversely.”Ambarish Rai, a right to education (RTE) activist and national convener of the RTE forum, slammed the government for going against the rights of students. “The government is trying to say that by doing away with the no-detention policy, the can improve quality of education whereas they are running away from their responsibilities of improving teaching in schools.”The policy was a progressive step that was not implemented properly as the authorities failed to bring in Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), “a scientific methodology to rigorously evaluate students which schools have not done. This will push out millions of students from schools”.The decision will impact girl students the most as “they already have a tough task to get into schools. Parents will force them out of schools if they fail”, said Rai. He claimed that because of the no-detention policy, retention increased by 9% in 2013-14. “But since only 12% schools were able to implement RTE, this was the government’s failure, not of the students.”CPI leader D Raja, who had opposed the Bill in Parliament, told TOI, “We are dealing with the future of children and education is a right. There are children who have no access to quality education. This decision should have been taken after consultation with teachers, psychologists and experts. We can’t pin the blame on the children.”Ecohing Raja, Ameeta Wattal, principal of Springdales Pusa Road, said she was against the Bill. “The government should make sure that teacher interaction and teaching quality is improved. It is easy to fail a student but difficult to work with them.”However, some also backed the Bill. Usha Ram, educationist and former principal of Laxman Public School, said, “Students now reach Class VIII and then face the exams in classes IX and X. Abolishing no-detention will help students learn to cope.”