Coimbatore: The school education department has identified as many as 3,757 seats in private schools across the district under 25% reservation of Rights to Education (RTE) Act for the underprivileged students. The department would start accepting the application from Friday.
For the second consecutive year, the state government has decided to accept applications through online portal. The students could apply online from April 20 to May 18 through the state-owned e-centres. The department would announce the list of selected and rejected candidates within three days.
Though the district has witnessed a drop in the number of schools where the reservation could be made, as the Act exempts minority schools, there has been an increase in the number of seats in the private schools, said sources with the office of Inspector of Matriculation Schools.
While the number of schools had reduced to 235 from 241 in the academic year 2016-17, the number of seats has increased to 3,757 from 3,583, the officials said, adding that a few schools had obtained minority status from the department and they were exempted.
Last year, it took three rounds to fill 88% seats in the district. Officials expect that they have to conduct at least three rounds even this year to fill most of the seats.