No lottery system for RTE admissions this year due to poor response
As students do not have any English medium schools available while filling the RTE admission forms, only 46,000 applications have been received thus far when there are more than 8 lakh seats available in the state
With admissions under the Right to Education (RTE) Act getting a very poor response from parents, the number of applications is very less compared to the number of seats available in schools across the state. As such, the RTE admission process of most of the schools will be completed without lottery this year.
Recently, the state school education department amended the RTE admission process rules. Firstly, admission under RTE will be given only in government, aided and local body-run schools. The education department has decided that students will be admitted to self-financing schools only in the event the aforementioned schools are not located near their homes.
As students do not have any English medium schools available while filling the RTE admission forms, only 46,000 applications have been received thus far when there are more than 8 lakh seats available in the state.
Till last year, only English medium schools were available for RTE admission. At that time, the number of applications would be three to four times more than the number of seats available (1.10 lakh). Around 80 to 90 thousand students would be admitted to these seats. However, entry into English medium schools has been completely closed due to the changes made by the education department.
Hereon, parents will have to pay the full fees for admission to English medium schools. At present, only 46,000 students have applied and these students will be admitted only to Marathi medium government schools. As a result, no student will be able to take admission in an English medium school under RTE this year.
“We wanted to fill up the admission form under RTE for our daughter to get a good English medium school, but it only shows the list of government schools in our area to which we can take direct admission. Hence, we have cancelled the idea of taking admission under RTE,” said Mahesh Jambhule, a parent from the Katraj area.
Government schemes are implemented so as to benefit a greater number of students. However, due to the restrictions imposed under RTE, there are doubts whether at least 50,000 students will be admitted under RTE this year.
“As we have received fewer applications till now for the available RTE seats across the state and in most districts, the number of seats are more than the number of applications, there will not be any lottery system for admissions this year,” said a senior education officer on condition of anonymity.
