Chief Educational Officer C.Amuthavalli has directed 176 schools in the district to keep 25 per cent of seats at the entry level (LKG in most of the schools and Standard VI in a few schools) vacant even if there are no takers for those seats under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act - 2009.
Addressing a meet of school principals at the Collectorate, she said the schools should not fill up the quota of 25 per cent of seats to be reserved under the Act with regular students since it was possible for children belonging to ‘disadvantaged groups’ and ‘weaker sections’ to seek admission even during the month of July.
According to the CEO, there were a total of 199 private schools in the district. Of them 23 were exempted from reserving seats under RTE Act as they were run either by religious or linguistic minorities.
Among the remaining 176 schools, 107 schools had submitted details of the admissions made by them under the RTE Act and 69 were yet to provide the information to the education department.
Collector Anshul Mishra directed the rest of the schools to submit the information by Monday. As per the information available with the department, a total of 2,352 seats were on offer in LKG and 78 in Standard VI in 107 schools under the RTE quota.
However, the 107 schools had reported that they had received only 693 RTE applications for LKG admissions, and of them only 372 students were found eligible for admissions after satisfying various criteria such as production of community certificate, income certificate and proof of residence situated within a radius of one kilometre from the schools concerned.
In so far as admission to Standard VI was concerned, for the 78 seats reserved under the quota, the schools had received 69 applications and all the applicants were given admissions.
“As of now, the data is incomplete and a comprehensive picture would emerge only after the rest of 69 schools submit the information,” the CEO said.
