However sensible these measures may seem, they have been ineffectual at best, and sometimes counterproductive.

With school enrollment for children ages 6-14 already at about 95 percent in 2009, opening up more public schools hardly needed to be a priority. What’s more, the effort has failed, largely because few parents have wanted to send their children to untested establishments. Since the implementation of the RTE Act, total enrollment in public schools has fallen by 11.6 million students (while private school enrollment has risen by 16.4 million students). By the beginning of the 2014-15 academic year, nearly 97,000 public schools in India had 20 or fewer students.

The RTE Act’s focus on lowering pupil-to-teacher ratios and improving physical infrastructure was also misguided: International research does not support the notion that either factor consistently leads to better learning. In India, children in public schools perform no better than children in low-fee private schools, even though public schools generally have better facilities, such as playgrounds, as well as teachers with more training. The latest Annual Status of Education Report, a nationwide survey by the NGO Pratham, shows that reading proficiency, for example, has declined overall since 2008, and more so in public schools than private schools.

Worse, the RTE Act’s requirement that private schools meet certain infrastructure standards has forced thousands of low-fee schools to close down, even though such schools generally deliver better results than public schools. According to a study by the National Independent Schools Alliance in New Delhi, by early 2014, 4,331 private schools had been shut down and another 15,083 had received notice to close, displacing or threatening to displace about four million students. Absurdly, the public schools that many of these displaced children have been forced to attend do not meet the standards that forced the private schools to close down.

The RTE Act’s provisions protecting parents’ right to choose a school for their children have also been ineffectual. The law requiring private schools to set aside at least 25 percent of seats for poor and disadvantaged children calls for them to be selected by lottery and the government to reimburse the schools for students’ fees. But this measure has been difficult to implement, partly because the poor administrative capacity of many states complicates the already cumbersome task of identifying which students qualify for assistance. Some state governments have also claimed that the money would be better spent trying to improve the quality of public schools.