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/10-1-02

The investigator came across contradictory findings while reviewing literature on awareness of teachers about RTE Act in relation to their gender, locality, management, marital status, stream of study and parental educational level. 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.

Methodology
Since, the investigator studied the awareness level of teachers in tribal areas of Odisha, 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: Mayurbhanj, Kalahandi, Koraput and Nabarangpur. The entire district of Mayurbhanj, Koraput and Nabarangpur come under scheduled area. Th. Rampur and Lanjigarh blocks of Kalahandi district come under scheduled area. 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 consisted of 34 multiplechoice items. Four alternatives were given against each item out of which one was correct answer. The dimension-wise distribution of items is given in the following table-1. Right to Free and Compulsory Education 05 3.
School Management 09 The data collection work started from the month of January, 2016 and continued till December, 2016. The data were analysed by using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Results were presented both graphically and tabular forms.

Overall Awareness of teachers about RTE Act
Overall awareness of teachers about RTE Act are analyzed using descriptive statistics as given in the following

level of significance
It is revealed from the above table-4 that the calculated F-ratio of all components of awareness of teachers about RTE Act among four districts are not significant at 0.05 level of significance with df 3/122 except in overall awareness of teachers about RTE Act among four districts whose calculated F ratio (4.365) is significant at 0.01 level of significance as p-value is 0.006. It indicates that there is a significant difference in the awareness about RTE Act among elementary school teachers in tribal areas of Kalahandi, Nabarangpur, Mayurbhanj and Koraput districts. Similar finding was also made by Thakur (2014) and Kaur (2015).
In order to identify exact difference among districts, Tukey HSD test of multiple comparisons was calculated. This is given in the following table-4.5. .002 The mean difference between Kalahandi and Nabarangpur (1.489) and Kalahandi and Mayurbhanj (1.489) districts on overall awareness of teachers about RTE Act are not significant at 0.05 level of significance as pvalue is 0.200. In case of the mean difference between Kalahandi and Koraput (2.911) districts on overall awareness of teachers about RTE Act is significant at 0.01 level of significance as p-value is 0.002. It means that the teachers of Kalahandi District are significantly more aware than the teachers of Koraput district about RTE Act. Similar finding was also made by Thakur (2014) and Kaur (2015).

Awareness of Teachers about RTE Act with reference to Gender
In order to study the overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to gender, the data was analyzed in the following table-5. and female teachers about RTE Act is not significant at 0.05 levels of significance. It means that there is no significant difference in the mean awareness scores of male and female teachers in all the components of RTE Act. Similar finding was also made by Kumar (2015), Patel (2015), Kumari & Allam (2014) and Thakur (2014). This contradicts to the finding of Islam & Chakraborty (2013), Abdul and Rajan (2008), Kumar (2014), Krishnarao & Mangesh (2015), Kaur (2015) and Mahanadi (2014).

Awareness of Teachers about RTE Act with reference to Educational Qualification
In order to study the overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their educational qualification, the data was analyzed through one-way ANOVA in the following table-6.

Awareness of Teachers about RTE Act with reference to Professional Qualification
In order to study the overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their educational qualification, the data was analyzed through one way ANOVA in the following table-7.

Awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to teaching experience
In order to study the overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their teaching experience, the data was analyzed through one way ANOVA in the following table-8. 13 level of significance with df 4/121 except in awareness of teachers about RTE Act in the component Right of children to free education (RCFE) whose calculated F ratio (2.590) is significant at 0.05 level of significance as p-value is 0.04. It indicates that there is a significant difference in the awareness about RTE Act in the component Right of children to free education (RCFE) among four categories of elementary school teachers on the basis of teaching experiences which contradicts to the earlier finding by Kumar (2014).
Awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their mother tongue In order to study the overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their mother tongue, the data was analyzed in the following table-9. From the above table-10, the obtained t-ratio of overall and all component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their mother tongue is not significant at 0.05 levels of significance except in the component school management (t value=2.152 and p-value=0.033). The teachers with mother tongue Odia is significantly more aware about RTE Act in the component school management than the teachers with local language as mother tongue.

Awareness of Teachers about RTE Act with reference to Age
In order to study the overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to age, the data was analysed through one way ANOVA in the following table-11. From the above table-11, it is revealed that the calculated F-ratio of overall awareness of teachers about RTE Act belonging to less than 30, 30 to 40 and above 40 age group are not significant at 0.05 level of significance with df 2/123.However, significant difference was found at 0.05 level of significance among teachers belonging to less than 30, 30 to 40 and above 40 age group with respect to dimensions preliminary and duties of stakeholders of RTE Act. It indicates that there is a significant difference in the awareness about RTE Act with respect to dimensions preliminary and duties of stakeholders among elementary school teachers of less than 30, 30 to 40 and above 40 age group.

Major Findings
• Elementary school teachers in tribal areas of Odisha are aware about Right to Education Act.
• There is a significant difference in the awareness about RTE Act among elementary school teachers in tribal areas of Kalahandi, Nabarangpur, Mayurbhanj and Koraput districts. Teachers of Kalahandi District are significantly more aware than the teachers of Koraput district about RTE Act. • There is no significant difference in the awareness about RTE Act between male and female teachers. • No significant difference was found in overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their educational and professional qualification. • No significant difference was found in overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their teaching experience except in the component Right of children to free education (RCFE). • No significant difference was found in overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their mother tongue except in the component school management. The teachers with mother tongue Odia is significantly more aware about RTE Act in the component school management than the teachers with local language as mother tongue. • No significant difference was found in overall and component wise awareness of teachers about RTE Act with reference to their age except in the component preliminary and duties of stakeholders.