RTE misses the mark in Mumbai, yet again

Seven in 10 applicants fail to secure admission.

SEVEN out of 10 children who applied for admission to primary and pre-primary sections under the Right to Education (RTE) Act quota in Mumbai’s private schools could not get admission this year. According to data available on the official website, only 2,798 applicants had confirmed their applications out of the 9,426 applicants by Saturday, the last day for confirming admissions.

While the total admissions achieved was slightly higher than last year when 2,503 applicants were successful, less than 30 per cent of the total applicants this year have managed to get through after five rounds of allotments and several extension of dates. This despite the availability of 7,099 seats. Under the RTE Act, students from economically weaker sections are entitled to 25 per cent seats in private and unaided schools.

No more rounds will be held and neither will the date for confirming admissions be extended anymore, said an official from the education department of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) which is conducting the admission process. While this year is the first time in seven years since the Act was implemented when the total number of applicants outnumbered the availability of seats, the enrollment ratio under the quota remained dismal.

Officials said that the disparity in number of admissions was owing to the skewed number of applications for certain schools. “We have tried our best to allot as many seats as possible but problem arises when some schools get much higher number of applications while others don’t get any application at all,” an official said, requesting anonymity. “Around 230 parents, who had applied for the admission of their wards, could not get a school of their preference,” he added.

Another reason cited by the official was that several parents did not confirm their admissions on time. “Several parents approached us saying they wanted to change the school allotted to them,” said the official.

Last year, schools had rejected several applicants finding faults in the application forms as well as the certificates provided by the applicants.

The state government was thereafter forced to issue a circular this year disallowing schools to verify documents and rejecting students. However, the education department has received a handful of complaints this year, too. RTE activist Sudhir Paranjape blamed the new government rule to allow schools to choose an entry point for the less number of applications.

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Meanwhile, over 5,700 seats will go vacant in the primary and pre-primary sections this year. The official said that the BMC might hold a special round in June to admit more students. However, a decision is yet to be taken.

priyanka.sahoo@expressindia.com