RTE quota seats go up, not admissions
to the seats reserved under the Right to Education (RTE) quota have multiplied — from 1,936 to 9,426 — in the past four years, but the number of admissions have not increased at the same pace.
With this year’s admission process concluding on Saturday, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to probe into the reasons for the poor turnout.
Students from economically and socially weaker sections are entitled to free education from classes 1 to 8 in 25% seats in nonminority, unaided schools under the RTE Act. Around 7,449 seats were available in 334 schools in the city this year.while the figures released by the BMC show that awareness on the quota has increased since the inception of online admission process in 2014-15, the rate of admissions is comparatively poor.
In 2014-15, out of 1,930 applicants, as many as 1,069 secured admissions. In 2015-16, only 1,688 out of 4,096 applicants took admission. In 2016-17, out of 6,409 aspirants, 2, 506 confirmed their seats. In 2017-18, out of 7,449 students, only 2, 798 took admissions.
BMC education chief Mahesh Palkar said they would analyse the trend and come up with solutions to improve the turnout.
“Within a couple of days, we will conduct an in-depth study of what is going wrong in the admission process,” said Palkar.
Although the BMC conducted five admission rounds between March 6 and April 29 this year, 5,000 seats were left vacant.
“It is surprising that so many RTE seats are remaining vacant even after multiple admission rounds,” he said.
According to the BMC, the rate of admissions began decreasing after the Supreme Court exempted minority and aided schools from following the RTE quota. “This might have brought down the number of good quality schools offering RTE seats,” said Palkar. “But a detailed analysis will help us find the exact cause and work on rectifying it.”
“Schools are unwelcoming towards RTE students. They guide them and are always looking for excuses to turn them away,” said Sudhir Paranjape, member of Anudanit Shiksha Samiti, a non-governmental organisation, that works for disadvantaged groups.
He added that some schools cancelled admissions of students last year, stating that they had submitted fake income certificates but they were not taken back even after they produced original documents.
can register for Joint Entrance Examination Advanced 2017 (JEE), the test conducted for admissions in the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITS), till 5pm on May 2 on its official website.
A circular on the website said registrations with late fees will be accepted until 5pm on May 4. Another circular said candidates hoping to bag admissions on the basis of OBC-NCL certificates should upload a declaration to the effect, along with their application form.
Over 10 lakh students took the JEE Main at 1,781 centres across India on April 2, 8, and 9.
Results were announced on April 27. Around 2.21 lakh students, who have cleared the Main, will now sit for JEE (Advanced) for around 11,000 seats in IITS. It will be held across the country on May 21.
Kalpit Veerwal from Rajasthan’s Udaipur scored 360 out of 360 in the JEE Mains for the first time to bag the All India Rank 1. Nashik’s Vrunda Rathi (17) with 321 marks was declared as the AIR topper among girls. Her overall AIR is 71.