The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act that became effective on April 1, 2010 is the most significant piece of legislation in the field of education in recent times. The objective is that every child of the age of six to fourteen years shall have a right to free and compulsory education in a neighborhood school till completion of elementary education.

Public Interest Foundation has made an effort to develop a set of metrics to measure the progress of implementation of the Right to Education Act. While the Act has the ambitious and laudable goal of providing free and compulsory education to every child, implementation of various intermediate steps and plans are critical to its success. In the tables that follow a set of metrics are developed based on the Act and the model Rules.

The metrics measure the progress of critical parameters in the areas of

• Governance and Organizational
• Financial
• Data Baselining
• Infrastructure
• Technical

The objective of developing these metrics is to assist the concerned authorities at central, state and local level in effective implementation of the act. The metrics are classified by the responsibility i.e. central, state and local government level. Each metric is explained in the following aspects:

1. Objective: why the metric should be measured
2. Definition: How is the activity defined
3. Data Source: The concerned department that has the data for the metric being measured. Mostly the same department / government will have the responsibility for implementation.
4. Target Date: Target date for implementation according to the Act. In case, the target date is not clearly specified in the Act, Public Interest Foundation has made certain assumptions for a target date keeping in view the overall target dates and linkages envisaged in the act.
5. Metric: The specific parameter to calculate the metric.