Delhi govt to acquire TC for students switching from pvt to govt schools: Sisodia

In order to ease the process for children switching to public schools from private schools, the Delhi government on Thursday announced that the students would not need to produce transfer certificates while seeking admission. Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said the decision was taken after several parents complained of being denied transfer certificates if they hadn’t paid the pending fees.

On May 31, the Delhi high court set aside two orders issued last year prohibiting private schools from collecting annual charges and development fees during the Covid-induced lockdown. The court directed that schools may collect these charges for the last academic year retrospectively in six monthly instalments starting from June 10, but only after a 15% reduction on total school fees in lieu of facilities not used by students during the lockdown. The court also allowed schools to charge the whole fees, including tuition fees and other charges, for the 2021-22 academic year.

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On Thursday, Sisodia said that while the governmentis going to present its side in the court, they had asked parents to enrol their children in government schools if they were unable to pay the fees in private schools due to pandemic-induced financial constraints.

“While parents were keen on transferring their children to government schools due to the improved condition of our schools, they said they were unable to do so as private schools were refusing to grant transfer certificate unless the parents cleared the pending fee,” the education minister said.

“Thus, we have taken the decision that any child seeking admission in government schools will not be denied a seat due to lack of transfer certificate. The child and their parents can bring in other documents from their school and the education department will conduct the process of obtaining the transfer certificate from the private school,” Sisodia said during a press briefing.

The Delhi government also said that the state education department had received over 28,000 applications for admissions to entry-level classes for nursery, kindergarten and Class 1 and over 90,000 applications for classes 6 to 12 in the capital’s public schools. “These numbers will only increase once the transfer certificate clause is removed,” Sisodia said on Thursday.

Admissions to entry-level classes in the Delhi government schools began from June 28 and the last date of submission of application forms is July 12. Those seeking admission in a government school in classes 6 to 9, can apply for the registration process online. The second phase of admission registrations will be from July 23 to August 6.