Usually schools, working in remote areas, do not fully comply with government regulations. However, if the rules are enforced strictly, it would lead to most schools closing down. How should an administrator strike a balance between enforcement of rules and educational rights of children?

The choice, correctly stated

The dilemma is not rules versus compassion. It is a conflict between two obligations of the same administrator: to enforce standards that exist to protect children, and to secure the right to education of children who have no alternative school within reach. Closing a non-compliant school in a remote area does not move those children to a compliant one; it moves them out of education.

Why literal enforcement fails

• It defeats the purpose of the rule. Infrastructure and teacher norms under the RTE Act exist to make schooling effective. Enforcing them into closure produces no schooling at all.
• The burden is regressive. The affected children are the poorest and most remote — precisely those the Act was written for.
• Irreversibility. A child out of school at ten is often out permanently, and girls disproportionately so. The harm does not wait for compliance.

Why non-enforcement also fails

• Standards protect children too. An unsafe building, an untrained teacher or an absent toilet are not paperwork problems.
• Selective non-enforcement corrodes the system and becomes a rent-seeking opportunity.
• It entrenches a two-tier entitlement in which remote children are permanently owed less.

The graded approach

The defensible course is neither closure nor blindness, but a triage that distinguishes what cannot be compromised from what can be sequenced.

• Separate safety from paperwork. Structural safety, drinking water, toilets, and protection from abuse are non-negotiable and must be fixed immediately. Playground area, boundary walls and record formats can be phased.
• Time-bound compliance plans with named milestones, in writing, rather than either a closure notice or silence.
• Fix the state's own default first. Many deficiencies are the government's failure — unfilled teacher posts, undelivered grants. Penalising a school for the state's omission is unjust.
• Use recognition conditionally, which the RTE framework allows, rather than as a binary.
• Alternatives before closure. If a school must close, arrange transport, residential facilities or a neighbouring school first; the sequence matters more than the decision.
• Document the deviation. Record the reasoning and the timeline so this is a considered administrative judgement and not a favour.

The ethical reasoning underneath

The child is the beneficiary of both the rule and the exception, so the child's interest is the tie-breaker. Rigid rule-following here would be what Weber warned of as bureaucratic ritualism — the means displacing the end. Equally, unstructured discretion invites capture. The resolution is principled discretion: deviate openly, for stated reasons, against a deadline, with the record available for scrutiny.

Conclusion

An administrator's duty is to the purpose of the rule, not only its text. Where the two diverge, the honest course is to protect what the rule protects — the child — while creating a time-bound, documented path back to full compliance.