Awareness of Elementary School Teachers in Tribal Areas of Odisha, India about RTE Act, 2009

RTE Act, 2009 of Government of India has been put into implementation with effect from 1st April, 2010. It came into force in Odisha, one of the states of India from 27th September, 2010. The Govt. of Odisha has taken various earnest steps towards implementation of RTE Act 2009. There are 62 tribes in Odisha with 22.21 % of the total population of the State (Sahu, 2014). The rate of literacy among the Scheduled Tribes is 52.24% against the overall literacy rate of 72.87% of the State as per 2011 census. In tribal areas, the development with respect to economic, political and educational is lagging as compared to rest of the country. There is dearth of studies particularly, related to awareness of teachers about RTE Act in tribal areas of Odisha. Hence, the investigator was keen to undertake a study about the extent of awareness of elementary school teachers about RTE Act. survey method is used for the present study. Population of the present study is all the elementary schools of tribal areas of Odisha. Target population is restricted to all the elementary schools of four tribal districts of Odisha. Cluster sampling method was used. Six blocks were selected from these four districts- two blocks from Nabarangpur, two blocks from Koraput, one block each from Kalahandi and Mayurbhanj purposively. These blocks come under scheduled area. Ten elementary schools were selected randomly from each district. All the available teachers were selected from these schools. There were a total of 127 teachers. An awareness test for teachers was developed and used by the investigator. It was found that elementary school teachers in tribal areas of Odisha are aware about Right to Education Act. However, no significant difference was found in awareness about RTE Act among teachers on the bases of their gender, educational and professional qualification, teaching experience, mother and age. Keywords: Awareness, Elementary school teachers, tribal areas of Odisha, RTE Act, 2009. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-1-0