One in two RTE allotments rejected by parents in Pune

The low number of confirmed admissions has sparked a debate with educationists blaming schools for cheating parents with rightful admissions and inaction on part of government authorities against rejections.

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Education authorities, on their part, say parents want only premium private schools through the RTE and reject other allotments. This year, a total of 781 schools have seats for RTE admissions and they together offer a total of 16,894 seats.

In the first lottery round of RTE admissions, which was conducted in the last week of April, as many as 8,231 students were allotted RTE quota seats of which 75 per cent — 6,144 admissions —were confirmed and all others were cancelled for reasons like parents not reporting to schools, problems with documentation and so on. In the second round of lottery admissions, 4,771 allotments were given, of which only about 25 per cent that is 1,216 seats were confirmed. The third round of lottery admissions is currently going on in which 2,298 students have been given allotments.

In all, between the two first two rounds of 13,000 allotments, about 7,360 admissions were confirmed, making it about 55 per cent of the total allotments.

Asked about the reason for the low turnout of admissions despite being allotted RTE quota seats, education
officials blamed the parents stating that many of them only want admissions in premium private English medium schools.

“The parents want RTE quota admissions but only in some specific schools. They have already taken admissions in another school and fill forms here only hoping for specific schools. This year, however, there have been few complaints. We are looking into the few cases we received,” said Mushtaq Shaikh, primary education officer, Zilla Parishad.

Of the 781 schools eligible for quota admissions, 263 schools have received no applications for admissions from parents.

However, education activists present a different version. Advocate Prashant Chande, founder member of RTE Parent Union, said that the problem arose because of the delay in the admissions process. “The first lottery round, which was to be conducted in March was done in April, and subsequently other rounds got delayed. The third round is still going on and it’s been a month since the academic year has began. Naturally, parents would not have risked the career of students ,” he said.

Sonali Kunjir of Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat said that a major flaw in this year’s RTE process is excessive authority given to schools to verify documents and confirm forms.