Reins of seat lottery in govt hands

Put to rest fears of schools rigging the admission process for seats reserved for students from socially and economically backward sections. The state government will make it clear on Tuesday that although schools will conduct the lotteries, the admission process will be in its hands.

This spells good news for several parents who were reportedly worried that they might have to bend over backwards to please schools to grant them a seat provisioned as reserved under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

The state will put up a prescribed admission form for the 25% reserved seats, which parents can directly download from the government website or take a copy of it from newspaper advertisements and submit it in a school.

The announcement will be made on Tuesday at a meeting, chaired by the school education minister, to frame guidelines for the implementation of the RTE Act.

The government is making this move to ensure that schools resort to no malpractices during admissions. To bring in a sense of transparency across the board, it even plans to introduce the lottery system for all admissions from next year.

Sanjay Deshmukh, special project director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, said, “All schools will be accountable to the government from now on. Schools will conduct the lottery for admissions, but they will be completely controlled by the state so that the process is not manipulated in any way. Education officers will monitor the entire process.”

The government will also tie up rules against the charging of capitation fee with the implementation of the RTE Act; errant schools will be fined 10 times the capitation fee they demand.

Also, schools conducting any sort of screening during the admission process for the 25% reserved seats this year and for all seats from the next will be charged a fine of up to Rs25,000 for the first offence. They will be slapped with a heavier fine for every subsequent offence.

Educationists, though, have raised doubts that such measures may not be enough to bring in a sense of transparency in the admission process. Jayant Jain, president of and NGO — Forum for Fairness in Education — said, “Schools will definitely have to play by the book if the government implements these provisions. But, school managements can still find a way to rig admissions. Centralised admissions and the government itself allotting candidates to schools will work best.”