Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Monday slammed private schools built on government land for allegedly refusing admission to children living in the neighbourhood and for deciding to challenge a Supreme Court judgment before the High Court.
Action against 50 schools
The schools had gone to court challenging a condition in the letter that allotted DDA land to them, as per which admissions have been restricted to the locality the institutions are in.
The Deputy Chief Minister has ordered action against 50 schools that have reportedly not been following guidelines and have been framing arbitrary and unreasonable criteria for admissions. He said that private schools should not be “teaching shops”.
Writing in his blog, Mr. Sisodia said that the schools had been given the land almost free of cost with conditions they must abide by.
“In 298 out of the 450 schools operating on government land, strict conditions were set related to fee, admission and education for the poor,” he wrote. Also, he directed the Directorate of Education (DoE) to ensure that the conditions in the allotment letter are followed by the 298 schools.
Attack on previous govt.
Mr. Sisodia also hit out at private schools running on DDA land for moving court against the new guidelines on nursery admissions saying the government had formed the new rules in accordance with a 2004 Supreme Court ruling.
The government has found that some schools have been identified as adopting arbitrary criteria, which were abolished last year.
The government in its admission guidelines had asked schools to stay clear of 51 criteria.
Blaming the previous government for not formulating guidelines for schools build on DDA land within three months of the 2004 ruling, Mr. Sisodia said, “Ideally, following Supreme Court’s ruling in 2004, the guidelines for nursery admissions in 298 schools running on DDA land should have been formulated within three months. But it did not happen for whatever reason,” he wrote in his blog.
Court pulls up AAP
“Now that our government has followed the court ruling and formulated guidelines, these schools should follow them but they have decided to challenge a Supreme Court judgment before the High Court,” the Deputy Chief Minister added.
While the Court pulled up the AAP government for coming out with nursery admission norms at the “eleventh hour”, leading to “chaos, confusion and wastage of valuable judicial time”, it directed the parents to fill up the application forms of various schools based on the criteria set by them as well as the government.
