Dual admissions, a worrying trend

Students take admissions to government, private schools to avail themselves of reservation benefits

Bijapur district has around 20,000 dual school admission cases, according to officials of the Department of Primary and Secondary Education.

The Department of Primary and Secondary Education, which is already gripped by issues such as acute teacher shortage, now has a new issue to deal with.

Parents have been getting dual school admissions for their wards in order to avail themselves of government benefits.

Revelation

Students who have taken admissions in government Kannada-medium schools are also enrolled into private English-medium schools, although they only attend classes in the latter.

This startling revelation was made by officials of the department in Bijapur.

The objective of the parents is to get their wards reservations in engineering or medical colleges, as those who study in government Kannada-medium schools get reservation benefits, said Bijapur zilla panchayat president Umesh Kolkur.

According to officials in the department, Bijapur district alone has around 20,000 dual school admission cases. While the district has around 4,72,658 students studying from standard one to ten, five per cent of them have obtained dual admission, the officials said.

For instance, a grade four student in one school also gets admission into another school in standard five, he explained. This helps them get admission in schools such as Navodaya, Morarji and Sainik School as students get multiple chances to clear the entrance tests,” Mr. Kolkur said. The duel admission practice is also causing a big statistical problem; records on school dropouts get skewed and so do the schools’ student strength, he said.

“We have come to know about this trend in Bijapur, but I am sure the illegal practice is followed in other parts of the State as well,” Mr. Kolkur said.

Illegal practice

Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Ratnakar told The Hindu that the matter has come to his notice and that a meeting of top officials of the department would be called in Bangalore.

He, however, admitted that such illegal practices are not possible without the involvement of the officials of the department.

The department is contemplating introducing a centralised system to maintain records of all the students by giving a single identification number for Transfer Certificates, which Mr. Ratnakar felt would avoid duplication.