Age for admission under RTE raised

Pune: According to the notice on the State Government website for admissions under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, the age limit for entry to Class I is between 6 years and 7 years, 2 months and 29 days.

Last year, for getting admission to Std I for the academic year 2018-19, the child needed to complete the age of 5 years 8 months on September 30, 2018. This was done to bring more students under the umbrella of RTE. However, this year, the age limit has been increased to over 6 years of age again.
“The government has been trying to increase the age limit step by step for the past couple of years,” RTE activist Mukund Kirdat of AAP Palak Union said.

He added, “The limit had been set at a lower age to include more students in the process. However, it has to be brought on par with the age limit for the regular students. Instead of doing that suddenly, the government has been trying to do it step by step, by tweaking the age criteria by a few months each time.”

In a significant change in the RTE portal, this year, when the age details of a child are entered in the form, the class of his admission immediately shows up, thus, avoiding any kind of confusion related to that.

While tweaking the age limit is fine, the activist said it might have harmed some students because of the private schools.

“This time, the schools had a choice to decide the entry level in which they would admit the RTE students. This has led to many schools in the city withdrawing their pre-primary section from the process. While already many applicants are left without admissions, now, many children eligible for pre-primary are unable to find schools in their areas,” Kirdat stated.