3 pvt schools in city fail to fill 34 seats allotted for EWS kids

Gurgaon: The state government’s CM Equal Education Relief, Assistance and Grant (CHEERAG) scheme, offering free education to students from EWS families with an annual income less than or equal to Rs 1.8 lakh in private schools, has failed to arouse interest among parents as it did among schools earlier.
In Gurgaon, only 3 of nearly 400 private schools offered 34 seats under the voluntary scheme but are yet to fill them. These include a school in Gurgaon block, which has filled all 15 seats allotted under the scheme in classes 3, 4 and 5. Another in Farrukhnagar block has filled only three of the 15 seats under the scheme in classes 6, 7, and 8. A third school in Farukhnagar is yet to submit the admissions status to the elementary education department.
Only 224 private schools across the state offered 9,368 seats for admissions this year under the CHEERAG scheme. Last year, the admissions started from Class 2, while this year the admissions started from Class 3.
Pankaj Sethi, director of Nutan Gyan Bharti Public School in Gurgaon, offering admissions under the scheme, said, “The seats reserved for EWS students are filled. In our school, the EWS students enrolled in Class 2 under the scheme have not dropped out after just a year. So, there are no more seats in Class 3 to offer.”
“Also, private schools charge under several heads, apart from fees the government promised to reimburse. Kids from lower-income groups cannot meet such expenses; neither can the government compensate the schools. Hence, the bigger and more popular schools did not show interest in the scheme,” he said.
An official handling RTE cases at the district elementary education office in Gurgaon said the schools that ultimately consented to offer seats under the scheme are not so popular among parents, who have been choosing to keep their kids in government schools. “The government schools are performing well and have schemes to provide tablets to students. The CHEERAG scheme targets students already enrolled in government schools but want to transfer to a private school for quality education. Most parents do not see a point in transferring their kids to a budget private school in the same rural areas where they are already enrolled,” said the official.
The CHEERAG scheme, launched in 2022, is a remodelled version of the now-scrapped Rule 134A of Haryana School Education Rules, 2007, which came into force under the then-CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda government.
A member of Haryana Progressive Schools Conference, said, “We expected a few admissions only since there was a major delay in starting the process. The academic session started over a month before admissions under the CHEERAG scheme started.”
The elementary education directorate issued a schedule for admissions in January but then revised it. That led to a delay, with students and parents having to apply for seats between May 4 and 12.