It’s been more than four months that the right to compulsory and free education act has been implemented, but things are still not clear as far as the implementation of the act is concerned.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has already announced to allocate Rs 231,000 crore over the next three years to set up infrastructure for implementing the RTE act but the sharing pattern between the state and the centre has not been finalized yet.

“We have not communicated the sharing pattern of 65-35 formally as it still needs a cabinet approval,” Anshu Vaish, secretary of School education and literacy told Governance Now.

The government has been facing much trouble to implement the act. To overcome these problems, it has decided to embark on a nationwide consultation process, with the principals and the stakeholders. The first meeting will be held on August 14, in which all issues pertaining to implementation of the law will be discussed.

One of the major issues, says Vaish, will be to decide on allowing screening of students during admission. She added, “We will have discussion and we’ll get to know what the general feeling on the screening issue is.”

Though private schools were asked to stop the screening of students but many government schools like Navodaya Vidhyalaya, where students are selected on the basis of entrance test for admission in class sixth, continued with their admission test even this year.

“There is a provision in the act which does not allow screening of any kind for students seeking admission in school but how that is to be used in schools like Navodaya, still has to be debated.”