The students who were admitted under the Right to Education Act, 2009, during the 2013-14 academic session to schools that were later deemed minority and exempted from RTE have been asked to pay the schools fee for the past two years. While the education department said it would not be able to reimburse the last two years’ fee, they assured the parents that the fee of these students would be taken up by the government from Class I. The issue came to light when a group of parents met with Primary Education Director Mahavir Mane on Wednesday. According to the parents, the children were admitted to pre-primary classes in 2013-14 under the RTE but following an apex court judgment in 2013, these schools were exempted from the Act. As per the RTE Act, 25 per cent of seats in the entry level classes should be reserved for children belonging to economically and socially backward classes and specially challenged children, and education should be imparted to them for free. “Around 40 students were admitted to the school along with my child under the RTE Act. But since the school was deemed minority, it no longer comes under the ambit of the RTE and hence we have been asked to pay the fee for the past two years — junior and senior KG. Now, my child will be in Class I. We are ready to pay the two year’s amount if the government promises to pay the fee from next year,” said a parent, who met Mane. A principal of an affected school, who did not wish to be named, said, “Even during admissions, we had told the department to wait till the court verdict on applicability of RTE Act was announced but they did not listen to us and admitted a lot of students to minority schools. Once the verdict was out, we had a meeting with parents and told them to pay up the fee in installments and that we would pay them back when we would be reimbursed by the government. We neither received the fee, nor were we reimbursed. Now, the government is saying that we will not be reimbursed for pre-primary classes.” Talking about the issue, Mahavir Mane said, “As per the RTE Act, we cannot reimburse schools for pre-primary classes as the Act identifies the starting point to be Class I in all schools. Hence, all the students who are in schools which now do not reserve 25 per cent seats under the RTE for the EWS category, will have to bear their own cost for pre-primary classes. But from the next academic session, the schools should not ask for fees from parents as the government will reimburse them if they send a proposal. But when asked about whether the schools will stop asking for fees from parents when their students are in Class I, the principal said, “For the past two years, even the schools that start from Class I were not reimbursed. Hence, first the government must figure out how to reimburse. We will ask the parents to pay the fee and then whenever government reimburses, we will pay it back to the parents. Now, it is up to the government not to put the parents at a loss.” Number of RTE seats to depend on strength of classes Clearing chaos on the issue of admission under the RTE Act to schools that had different intake capacity at pre-primary and primary classes, the latest government resolution has announced that the number of seats reserved for students from economically weaker sections of society will depend on the total strength in pre-primary or Class I, which ever is lesser. As per the government resolution, if pre-primary classes have an intake capacity more than that of Class I in the same school, then the total intake should be equal to that of Class 1 and in that, 25 per cent seats must be reserved for EWS students under the RTE Act, 2009. For example, if there are 100 seats in Class I and 200 seats in pre-primary sections, 25 seats will be reserved under the RTE quota to admissions in pre-primary classes. In case the number of seats in pre-primary are lesser than that of Class I, then the benchmark will be the total number of seats in pre-primary and 25 per cent of these seats will be reserved under the RTE Act for the online admission procedure. The remaining seats will be filled in Class I. There will be two entry points in these cases where pre-primary intake is less than Class I. While in 25 per cent seats of pre-primary, the admissions will be done and subtracting this number from the 25 per cent of Class I intake, admissions will be done to Class I too. This has been done so that the seats in Class I that should be ideally reserved for EWS category students are not left vacant. Since there are two entry points, the students belonging to socially and economically backward classes will be at an advantage,” said Mahavir Mane, Primary Education Director of the state. (ENS)
