Right to Education Act and Disabled Students: The Unfinished Struggle for Equity

Disabled children under the Indian education system have been systematically “othered,” struggling to integrate with the mainstream. The educational journey of these children often begins with anxiety—finding a nearby, affordable school in itself is a challenge. Admission becomes harder due to a lack of proper guidance for their needs. Poor infrastructure further limits opportunities in sports and arts.

“Ethics and equity are the principles of justice that do not change with the calendar”,- said the great English essayist D. H. Lawrence. Yet, in the Indian education system, these principles are changed and compromised with new calendars of private funding and equity every financial year.

“Tuition fee of 4 lakhs for LKG class is not preparing kids for school but pushing parents towards bankruptcy,” posted Neha Nagar, a financial advisor in Bangalore, on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, today Indian parents are struggling with an education inflation rate of 8% to 10%, which has been consistently outpacing the general inflation rate.

This raises a pressing question: how can education remain accessible in a society so deeply stratified by wealth under privatization? Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi once captured this dilemma sharply: “Equity is compromised due to the privatization of education. Education has become a commodity. Those who can afford to buy it, buy it; and those who can sell it, make money out of it.”

PRICE OF ACCESS

While the poorer buyers of education are plagued by questions of mere accessibility and continuity of education, the middle-class buyers are troubled by rising and hidden costs of education, making learning a social issue.

“While the spending on pre-primary education as a share of total household consumption expenditure is less than one per cent for the children who attend government schools, it is 8.8% for private pre-primary school-going children. Similarly, households sending their children to English-medium pre-primary schools spend 437% more than those who opted for other medium preschools,” as per research on inequalities in access to pre-primary education in India by NIH.

With these hidden costs projected to grow by 8.1% in 2025, questions on accessibility loom large. Quarterly charges and admission fees mark only the beginning, as families must also contend with recurring weekly expenses on crayons, books, and IT fees—costs that shape the real affordability of a child’s schooling.

A REQUIEM FOR INDIAN DREAM

While dreams abound in plenty into our social aspirations of equality, equity, and growth, as also inscribed in 2009’s ambitious “Right to Education Act“, our collective failures are equally grave. To summarize the act’s cynosure on public education claimed- “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of 6 to 14 years in such manner as the State may by Law determine.” The legislation further prohibited- “mental harassment and physical punishment, screening procedures for the admission of children, capitation fees, private tuition by the teachers, and running schools with no recognition”. Consequently, this Act led to a positive increment in gross enrollment for upper primary from 81.7 per cent in FY2009-10 to 89.7 per cent in FY2023-24, pointing towards a greater inclination towards education across communities.

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Additionally, RTE’s most impactful mandate was 25% reservation across all schools—private, aided, unaided, or special-category for economically weaker sections (EWS) and disadvantaged groups (DG) to bring together students of different social strata and interests. Consequently, in FY2018–19, more than 3.3 million students secured admission under this provision.

Yet, despite this landmark provision, compliance with several other critical mandates of the Act has remained weak. Even decades after its implementation, only 54% of schools had usable girls’ toilets and 57% had functional toilets overall, according to a study, reflecting a serious gap in basic infrastructure.

Teacher availability continues to be a challenge. While RTE has mandated a pupil–teacher ratio of 30:1 yet, schools in India face a shortage of nearly 5 lakh trained teachers, with many schools still dependent on untrained para-teachers. Financially, as well, the Act has struggled. While implementing RTE required ₹2.3 lakh crore over five years, budgetary allocation for school education has remained consistently inadequate, exposing the state’s complacent approach to one of the nation’s biggest tools for empowerment—education.

Researchers have further highlighted how even the 25% reservation mandate has faltered in practice, with private schools citing reimbursement delays, indulging in discrimination, or levying “hidden fees.” As a result, RTE has provided only partial relief to poor families from the burden of costly private education, leaving the larger question of true accessibility still uncertain.

DISABLED AND INVISIBILISED

Disabled children under the Indian education system have been systematically “othered,” struggling to integrate with the mainstream. The educational journey of these children often begins with anxiety—finding a nearby, affordable school in itself is a challenge. Admission becomes harder due to a lack of proper guidance for their needs. Poor infrastructure further limits opportunities in sports and arts. The state’s half-hearted approach is visible when, instead of appointing a braille specialist to assess visually impaired students, a “scribe” is assigned, denying them evaluation in their own language and comfort. According to the National Institute of Urban Affairs, India has only 3,000 schools for special needs children, with just one school for every 7,800 children, leading to massive inaccessibility of education for the disabled.

“I have talked to all the best schools of Gurgaon for my daughter’s admission yet; they would always avoid me because my child is visually impaired,” said Rupali, an IT professional based in Gurugram and mother of a 5-year-old special child. She further narrates how many times she had to run to the principal’s offices and how, after long negotiations, her daughter was secured admission in one of the best schools of Gurugram with an extra fee due to ancillary costs of scribes and braille training.

“My child may have weak vision, but she understands everything very well and is on par with her other mates at school. It is as if society and school are charging me exorbitantly for loving and fighting for my child’s rights. The school is always scared that my child’s performance may weaken the school’s results which I believe is wrong. My child is different and requires different opportunities, that’s all,” Rupali told TheRise.  She is one of the representatives of many parents of disabled children who are regularly taxed for their child being differently abled.

Even the teachers of these special schools who had attended in-service training programs have several times raised concerns about the short duration of the training, the relevance and appropriateness of content, and the lack of sustainable impact on their practice (7), according to a study. This proves that people in the system, too, are raising alarms on the state of special needs education while admitting major inconsistencies with RTE’s bold vision of “education for all.”

Yet, the privatization of education is proving an expensive panacea by defeating government schools’ limited, albeit performative, inclusivity of ramps and scribes. In 2019, Delhi private schools filled their admission by reserving 5,647 vacant seats under the CWD (Children with Disabilities) quota, in which only 44 students applied even after 4 successive rounds, highlighting the high costs for private education for disabled children, blocking opportunities despite quotas.

“Schools are run by big people mainly for establishing a market brand and steady profits every financial year, so the school can continue with its own legacy. Now you tell me, with all the responsibilities of these children on our shoulders, you want us to charge you like some government school? Besides, isn’t our result and children’s English better than those government school kids? This all takes money. Those who can afford it always keep ringing my phone for admission, while those who can’t stay silent,” Mr Rakesh, a private school admin in his 40s, told TheRise.

In response to such inequities, the Delhi government has issued admission guidelines for children with disabilities to address low enrollment rates in private schools, in line with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, 2016. These guidelines clarified that children with “benchmark disabilities” are eligible for admission based on a diagnosis of disorders like intellectual disability, specific learning disability, autism spectrum disorder, or related categories. Further, in 2025, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities signed a tripartite agreement with the NIOS and the NCERT to bolster inclusive education for disabled people, signifying the state’s growing interest in this matter.  

Still, every story of an unsanitised school washroom, every admission denied on economic grounds, and every disabled child deprived of proper teacher assistance raises a rhetorical question mark on RTE’s ambitious promise of “ensuring good quality elementary education.” Even sixteen years after the implementation of the Right To Education Act 2009, our questions, litigations, and deliberations continue to circle back to the same boiling point: Will India ever truly realise its dream of universal, equitable, and quality education?

[Anviksha Singh is a TRIP Intern]

[Mentored and Edited by Sneha Yadav]

REFERENCES

1. https://ijccep.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40723-023-00117-4
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10123015/
3. https://www.edufund.in/blog/impact-of-education-inflation-on-hidden-costs-of-education/
4. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/19014/1/the_right_of_children_to_free_and_compulsory_education_act_2009.pdf
5. https://educationforallinindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/decoding-enrolment-ratio-2023-24.pdf
6. https://www.orfonline.org/research/ten-years-of-rte-act-revisiting-achievements-and-examining-gaps
7. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Priyanta-Ghosh-2/publication/360757635_RTE_and_the_Resource_Requirements_The_Way_Forward/links/628b84cfcd5c1b0b34f0f430/RTE-and-the-Resource-Requirements-The-Way-Forward.pdf
8. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/credit/documents/papers/2024/2401.pdf
9. Taneja-Johansson, S., Singal, N. and Samson, M. (2021) ‘Education of Children with Disabilities in Rural Indian Government Schools: A Long Road to Inclusion’, International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 70(5), pp. 735–750. doi: 10.1080/1034912X.2021.1917525.
10. https://impart.snehadhara.org/wp-content/uploads/Policies/National_Policy_for_Persons_with_Disabilities.pdf
11. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/delhi-govt-issues-admission-guidelines-for-children-with-special-needs-125060200204_1.html