New Delhi: For 10-year-old Rani (name changed), the beginning of every academic session brought the same hope, that perhaps this would be the year that she finally entered a classroom. But when her mother approached a nearby school for admission, she was allegedly turned away because the child did not have an Aadhaar card.Rani’s family had moved to Delhi in search of work and struggled with documentation. Her mother, a domestic worker, repeatedly tried to secure admission but did not know how to navigate the paperwork. As months passed, Rani remained at home, watching other children in her neighbourhood leave for school.Her case eventually reached the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR), which intervened to ensure that the absence of Aadhaar did not keep her out of school. Still, for Rani, it meant months of learning lost while waiting for access to a classroom.July is being observed as Child Safety Month, during which various measures are being undertaken to strengthen child protection and prevent cases involving threats to children’s safety and well-being. “During this month, we have set a target of visiting two schools in every district, so about 20 schools in all, to assess compliance and keep a check on child safety measures. Ever since I took charge, I have also designated a room as a ‘courtroom’, where we aim to hear and dispose of cases the same day. Education is a fundamental right and cannot be denied to any child. We will also soon activate data on student absenteeism to help identify and address cases where children may be at risk of dropping out of school,” said Om Prakash Vyas, DCPCR chairperson.Rani’s story is one among hundreds that point to the scale of education-related grievances reaching the child rights body. More than six in every 10 complaints processed by DCPCR over a 15-month period were related to the Right to Education (RTE). Between April 2025 and June 2026, the commission processed 2,214 complaints, of which 1,337 or 60.4% were RTE-related.Behind these numbers are children kept away from classrooms for vastly different reasons. A teenager, Aman (name changed), had been attending school regularly until a dispute within his family abruptly disrupted his education. Following a quarrel with the child amid an ongoing family conflict, his father stopped sending him to school. Days away from the classroom turned into weeks but Aman remained at home. His absence was caused neither by poor performance nor an unwillingness to study, but by tension in the household.For 15-year-old Ravi (name changed), the barrier was financial. With his family struggling to make ends meet, he dropped out of school and began working to contribute to the household income. In his family, circumstances and convention had already defined the roles expected of children: girls were expected to marry early, while boys were expected to earn. For Ravi, continuing his education increasingly came to be viewed as a luxury the family could not afford. Every day spent in a classroom was a day he could have been earning. Gradually, textbooks gave way to work, and the prospect of completing school grew more distant.Experts said such cases reflect a wider challenge of keeping adolescents from economically vulnerable families in school, with poverty and gender expectations sometimes combining to push boys into premature employment and girls towards early marriage. “Frequent migration, lack of identity documents, unstable housing, and parents’ long working hours make school enrolment difficult. Irregular attendance and repeated movement, not able to cope with the curriculum, make retention even harder. This is not a challenge for children alone. It is equally a challenge for schools. We need flexible, child-centred, migration-sensitive education models that ensure no child is denied the right to learn simply because the family is on the move.” said Sanjay Gupta, director of Chetna NGO.The commission’s monthly data shows the persistent weight of education-related grievances. In Jan 2026, 63 of 112 complaints processed were related to RTE, followed by 58 of 116 in Feb and 36 of 154 in March. The overall caseload rose sharply in April, when 176 of 323 complaints were RTE-related, followed by 112 of 283 in May and 78 of 195 in June.Separately, 79 complaints concerning lack of access to education came through the helpline of the department of women and child development in the 2025-26 financial year, adding another layer to a picture in which, for many children, getting into or remaining in a classroom is itself a struggle.
