Third round of online RTE admissions gets no takers
Activists blame lack of awareness drives by the BMC
MUMBAI: There don’t seem to be many takers for the Right to Education (RTE) seats reserved for the economically weaker students, even in the third round of online admissions.
Although the application process for the third round began on August 16, most city schools have not received any applications from students yet.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had decided to conduct a third round of online admissions as 6,392 RTE seats in city’s unaided non-minority schools were lying vacant, even after two rounds of online admissions.
As the BMC has discontinued guidance centres in this round, applicants are directly supposed to fill the forms from schools of their choice.
“Not a single student has approached us for RTE online admissions so far,” said Lily D’souza, headmistress, St Joseph’s Primary School, Orlem.
Schools claim they have not been informed about the added responsibilities in this round.
“We were not informed that applicants have to fill their online forms through the school instead of the designated centres,” said Amita
Katyal, principal of Pawar Public School, Kandivli.
The civic body has also failed to advertise RTE seats in the city, as directed by the high court.
Earlier, BMC officials had said that the third round will be publicised through banners on public transport vehicles such as BEST buses, and through TV and print ads.
“We have released some
newspaper ads. Others advertisements are yet to be published, but will be done soon,” said a senior official from the RTE cell of the BMC education department, at Dadar.
Activists, meanwhile, blamed the lack of awareness drives by the BMC for the poor response. “Unless they advertise, parents will not know that applications are available,” said SM Paranjape, member of
the Anudanit Shikha Bachao Samiti, who recently moved the Bombay high court against the BMC and the state government for not implementing the admission process properly.
The court had asked the BMC to advertise through a variety of mediums. “However, so far, we have only seen a small advertisement in a Marathi newspaper,” Paranjape said.