The article is an excerpt from the judgment Anjuman Ishaat E. Taleem Trust v. The State of Maharashtra and ors. (2025 SCC Online SC 1912)
152. An argument which has been raised before us and which was successfully argued in Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust (supra) is that Article 21A casts an obligation solely on the State to ensure full implementation of the right and, therefore, minority institutions should not be burdened with how the State intends to carry forward its vision of implementation of such right.
153. It is true that Article 21A imposes a primary duty upon the State to ensure the provision of free and compulsory elementary education. However, the fulfilment of this duty necessarily involves the participation of both public and private stakeholders in the education ecosystem. Minority institutions that voluntarily choose to engage in the public function of imparting elementary education cannot simultaneously claim complete insulation from regulatory frameworks that give effect to the constitutional mandate under Article 21A. The RTE Act is one such regulatory framework.
154. The vision of universal elementary education under Article 21A, indubitably, cannot be achieved by the State alone, in isolation. Education, especially at the foundational level, is a shared constitutional responsibility. Minority institutions, while retaining their autonomy in matters essential to their cultural and linguistic identity, do not operate in a vacuum. Once they enter the realm of formal schooling and benefit from recognition, affiliation, or aid from the State, they partake in the broader constitutional project of building an inclusive and educated society. It would therefore be constitutionally untenable to argue that such institutions remain unaffected by frameworks such as the RTE Act through which the State seeks to discharge its obligations. Reasonable participation in this vision does not and cannot dilute its institutional character.
155. We, therefore, doubt the decision in Pramati Educational and Cultural Trust (supra) on this aspect.
I. Teachers’ Role in Imparting Quality Education
156. Quality of teachers and teaching standards are integral to the fundamental right to education under Article 21A cannot perhaps be doubted. This Court, times without number, has emphasized that ‘education’ would be meaningless if it is not accompanied by quality education, which is primarily dependent on qualified and well-trained teachers. Further, it is the State’s constitutional obligation to ensure that educational institutions maintain high teaching standards, and appointments of teachers should strictly adhere to prescribed qualifications to maintain these educational standards.
157. The importance of training for teachers was discussed by this Court in N.M. Nageshwaramma v. State of A.P., 1986 Supp SCC 166. Mushrooming of unauthorised teacher training institutes in the State of Andhra Pradesh was under consideration. While dismissing the writ petitions before it, the concern expressed more than forty years back by this Court appears to be relevant even now. It was said:
“3. … The Teachers Training Institutes are meant to teach children of impressionable age and we cannot let loose on the innocent and unwary children, teachers who have not received proper and adequate training. True they will be required to pass the examination but that may not be enough. Training for a certain minimum period in a properly organised and equipped Training Institute is probably essential before a teacher may be duly launched. …”
158. This Court in Andhra Kesari Educational Society v. Director of School Education, (1989) 1 SCC 392 upon deciding the lis before it made the following parting remarks:
“20. … Though teaching is the last choice in the job market, the role of teachers is central to all processes of formal education. The teacher alone could bring out the skills and intellectual capabilities of students. He is the ‘engine’ of the educational system. He is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values. He needs to be endowed and energised with needed potential to deliver enlightened service expected of him. His quality should be such as would inspire and motivate into action the benefiter. He must keep himself abreast of everchanging conditions. He is not to perform in a wooden and unimaginative way. He must eliminate fissiparous tendencies and attitudes and infuse nobler and national ideas in younger minds. His involvement in national integration is more important, indeed indispensable. It is, therefore, needless to state that teachers should be subjected to rigorous training with rigid scrutiny of efficiency. It has greater relevance to the needs of the day. The ill-trained or sub-standard teachers would be detrimental to our educational system; if not a punishment on our children. The Government and the University must, therefore, take care to see that inadequacy in the training of teachers is not compounded by any extraneous consideration.”
159. Similarly, the significance of quality training to equip teachers to mould the future citizenry of the country, was discussed in State of Maharashtra v. Vikas Sahebrao Roundale, (1992) 4 SCC 435. The relevant passage reads thus:
“12. … The teacher plays pivotal role in moulding the career, character and moral fibres and aptitude for educational excellence in impressive young children. Formal education needs proper equipping of the teachers to meet the challenges of the day to impart lessons with latest techniques to the students on secular, scientific and rational outlook. A well-equipped teacher could bring the needed skills and intellectual capabilities to the students in their pursuits. The teacher is adorned as Gurudevobhava, next after parents, as he is a principal instrument to awakening the child to the cultural ethos, intellectual excellence and discipline. The teachers, therefore, must keep abreast of ever-changing techniques, the needs of the society and to cope up with the psychological approach to the aptitudes of the children to perform that pivotal role. In short teachers need to be endowed and energised with needed potential to serve the needs of the society. The qualitative training in the training colleges or schools would inspire and motivate them into action to the benefit of the students. …”
160. Then again, this Court in Chandigarh Administration. v. Rajni Vali (Mrs.), (2000) 2 SCC 42 reiterated the State’s obligation to maintain a certain standard of teaching and that appointment of qualified teachers was the bare minimum to be achieved in any institution by holding thus:
“6. The position has to be accepted as well settled that imparting primary and secondary education to students is the bounden duty of the State Administration. It is a constitutional mandate that the State shall ensure proper education to the students on whom the future of the society depends. In line with this principle, the State has enacted statutes and framed rules and regulations to control/regulate establishment and running of private schools at different levels. The State Government provides grant-in-aid to private schools with a view to ensure smooth running of the institution and to ensure that the standard of teaching does not suffer on account of paucity of funds. It needs no emphasis that appointment of qualified and efficient teachers is a sine qua non for maintaining high standards of teaching in any educational institution. …”
161. In State of Orissa v. Mamata Mohanty, (2011) 3 SCC 436, the central role played by a teacher in shaping individuals, and future citizens, was emphasized to establish that the State must be uncompromising when it comes to quality of teachers recruited. This Court ruled:
“33. In view of the above, it is evident that education is necessary to develop the personality of a person as a whole and in totality as it provides the process of training and acquiring the knowledge, skills, developing mind and character by formal schooling. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain a high academic standard and academic discipline along with academic rigour for the progress of a nation. Democracy depends for its own survival on a high standard of vocational and professional education. Paucity of funds cannot be a ground for the State not to provide quality education to its future citizens. It is for this reason that in order to maintain the standard of education the State Government provides grant-in-aid to private schools to ensure the smooth running of the institution so that the standard of teaching may not suffer for want of funds.
34. Article 21-A has been added by amending our Constitution with a view to facilitate the children to get proper and good quality education. However, the quality of education would depend on various factors but the most relevant of them is excellence of teaching staff. In view thereof, quality of teaching staff cannot be compromised. The selection of the most suitable persons is essential in order to maintain excellence and the standard of teaching in the institution. It is not permissible for the State that while controlling the education it may impinge the standard of education. It is, in fact, for this reason that norms of admission in institutions have to be adhered to strictly. Admissions in mid-academic sessions are not permitted to maintain the excellence of education.”
162. The primacy of providing elementary education and strict compliance with teaching standards and qualifications was highlighted, in Bhartiya Seva Samaj Trust v. Yogeshbhai Ambalal Patel, (2012) 9 SCC 310, in the following words:
“26. … education and particularly that elementary/basic education has to be qualitative and for that the trained teachers are required. The legislature in its wisdom after consultation with the expert body fixes the eligibility for a particular discipline taught in a school. Thus, the eligibility so fixed requires very strict compliance and any appointment made in contravention thereof must be held to be void.”
163. While reflecting on free and compulsory education, we cannot, therefore, be oblivious of the need for quality education to be imparted to children aged between 6 and 14 years. Compromising the quality of a teacher would necessarily compromise quality of education, and is a direct threat to the right of children to quality education which is a necessary concomitant of the right guaranteed by Article 21A. This, in turn, would render the entire object and purpose of the RTE Act meaningless. In the sphere of primary education, a qualified teacher, at the very least, would be an assurance of quality education. Quality of education is, therefore, inherent in the right to education under Article 21A.