Shankar Indwar, a resident of Bariatu, who from the past two years has been running from pillar to post for the admission of his seven-year-old Aryan Satya, is a shattered soul. He is one of hundreds of other parents in the city who are distressed over the schools’ random process of selecting the students.
Explaining his plight, Indwar said that he had applied in all the renowned schools of the city but none of the school list had his child’s name. When he asked the school authorities the reason behind it, they put all blame on the lottery system.
Complaints regarding irregularities in school admission are nothing new. Both students and their parents keep scratching their heads to figure out the ground of rejection of their application in private unaided English Medium schools but to no avail.
Parents irked over the Private school admission procedure through lottery system, where candidates are randomly selected by drawing chits from the bowl for nursery classes are seeking more transparency in the process. According to them every selection list, besides containing the number of seat sanctioned, must also provide information on number of seats filled up, vacancies and particulars of each chosen candidates. Moreover, the lottery system procedure should be carried out in their presence.
Poonam Bhatia residing at PN Bose Compound in lalpur area said, “Majority of eligible children dream of aspiring education from city’s best schools get sideline by this process. Our demand from is the administration is to conduct the selection procedure in front of the parents for transparency.”
Guidelines for admission into schools issued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009, not only prohibits screening of children and interviewing their parents but also ask to maintain transparency in the entire procedure.
“It is ridiculous that the school administration keeps parents in dark during admission procedure. We want transparency in each detail being shared by the school authority,” said Main Road resident Neeta Majumdar.
Federation of Jharkhand Abhibhavak Manch Convener Ajay Rai, who is protesting against the violation of RTE Act provisions, has demanded also to form a supervisory committee that would look into the admission of private schools.
“We are receiving complaints regarding, 25 per cent seats which are reserved for the students hailing from the economically weak background have been sold. To check the issue and nip in the bud of such practices if taking place, a meeting of School Principals with District Education Officer (DEO) Shiv Charan Marandi has been called on April 28,” said Rai.
However, the schools Principals reject the ‘no transparency’ allegation and have termed it baseless.
Coming down heavily on the leveled allegation St Thomas Principal Joshep J Ayrookuzy said, “It is rubbish. School is maintaining complete transparency in sharing information with the parents regarding admission of their wards. We receive thousands of application for few seats and for that reason random selection process is being adopted.”
Echoing him, Jawahar Vidhya Mandir (JVM) Shyamli School Principal AK Singh said that the selection list display the number of seats and accordingly the name of candidates. On the question of parents involvement during lottery system he added, “We are not having problem in it provided the higher authorities give their nod to it.”