Gujarat Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasam. (File)Gujarat Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama on Wednesday declined to extend the deadline for admission under Right to Education (RTE) Act’s 25 per cent reservation in private schools saying “it might affect education”.
A lot of parents have been demanding an extension in the deadline stating that in the wake of Covid-19 restrictions they could not procure required documents.
Also, several parents whose applications were rejected due to incomplete documents or any discrepancy in the details submitted online by them demanded an opportunity to correct the “unintentional” errors. Applicants were informed about these errors only after the deadline, thus ruling out any chance to get their applications corrected. After declaration of admissions under RTE on August 7 following which online applications were accepted from August 19 to August 29.
“Parents were given 23 days to collect required documents for applying. Since private schools have already started online education, so in case the deadline to submit forms is extended or additional time is given for corrections, the first round of admissions will not be declared on time. This is expected to affect the students’ education,” Chudasama said.
Over 2.04 lakh applications were received on the online application portal out of which 1.19 lakh have been approved, so far. A total of 96,000 seats are reserved in private schools across the state.
Another 24,045 applications have been rejected and 41,788 cancelled by the applicants themselves. Scrutiny of the remaining 18,890 applications is still in process.The result of first round of admissions will be announced on September 11.
However, parents have been lamenting that the state government’s decision will leave their wards out of the scheme. “I received an SMS yesterday stating that my application was rejected due to wrong residential proof. The cyber cafe where I submitted my application had uploaded an old electricity bill as my residential proof that bore the builder’s name. I have an electricity bill under my name but in rush to fill the form I could not verify it before uploading. I went to the education office in Ahmedabad to get it corrected but I was told that nothing can be done,” said Jairambhai Solanki, a daily wage labourer from Narol.
After no response from authorities, parents in Vadodara protested outside the district education office earlier on Tuesday after their RTE applications were rejected. This year, the process for admissions in private schools under RTE Act’s 25 per cent reservation clause was delayed by nearly two months since the state government officially announced the academic session to commence on June 15.