Bring preschools under RTE: Aaditya Thackeray to Centre

Yuva Sena president Aaditya Thackeray, in a letter addressed to Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister for Human Resources Development, urged the government to bring pre-primary admissions under the purview of the Right To Education (RTE) act. He also demanded a law to cover preprimary education which would include minimum quality and safety norms for pre-primary schools. He further stated forced donations and parent interviews (on the basis of economic strata or education) for such schools must be held as crimes punishable by the law.

Referring to rising incidents of sexual assault on young girls, Thackeray urged the minister to make it mandatory for schools across the country to teach children from Class 5 the meaning of “right and wrong touch”. The Sena leader who was in New Delhi also called on Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Dr Harsh Vardhan to discuss a range of issues.

The Yuva Sena leader, in two letters addressed to Javadekar, expressed how difficult it was for young parents to pay donations. Further, there was the problem of schools interviewing tots and their parents. The child was expected to recite poems, while parents were expected to satisfy educational or economic criteria. Thackeray argued such requirements prevented many families from obtaining quality education in our country.

He demanded a safety audit every six months in each preprimary school. Admission processes must be open, transparent and CCTV footage of the event must be available, he suggested.

Preschools should not be allowed to make enrolments two years prior to the academic year, he felt. All preschools should have a common syllabus and local applicants should be given priority, his letter said.

In another letter, the Yuva Sena president demanded all schools must have a weekly class on the importance of respecting each other's gender and treating each other as equals. He further demanded self-defence lessons for girls be made compulsory in Classes 8, 9 and 10. These lessons could be taught at least once a week during school hours to serve as a weapon to prevent cases of atrocities against females.

In his letter to Union Minister for Environment Dr Harsh Vardhan, Thackeray, referring to the plastic ban imposed by the Sena Minister for Environment Ramdas Kadam in Maharashtra, has demanded the Union government take urgent, timebound steps to curb plastic pollution and ban the production, possession and sale of single-use disposable plastic by 2019.