MCD fails to fill 25% seats reserved under EWS quota

Right from coming up with pamphlets informing parents, to putting up information on their website and even extending the last date of admission thrice, has not helped MCD-aided schools to fill up the mandatory 25% seats under the EWS quota. HT reports.

Right from coming up with pamphlets informing parents, to putting up information on their website and even extending the last date of admission thrice, has not helped MCD-aided schools to fill up the mandatory 25% seats under the EWS quota.

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Under the Right to Education, all schools are supposed to reserve 25% of total seats for children who belong to Economically Weaker Section (EWS) of the society.

However, the scheme has got a lukewarm response as far as private aided schools of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) are concerned.

According to the MCD officials, after the admission process got over they calculated the number of students who have taken admission this year, and so far only 10% seats have been filled under the EWS category.

The civic agency provided aide to a total of 763 private primary schools in the city. These schools have a total of 18,000 seats. Officials said only 5% students could be admitted in these schools till February 15 — the last date of admission.

To ensure that more students could be admitted to these schools, the civic agency’s education department had decided to extend the deadline.

“We extended the last date not once but thrice. But even that has not helped us in filling all the seats,” said Mahender Nagpal, chairman, education committee of the MCD.

In MCD’s west zone, where there are 1,041 seats reserved for EWS category, only 172 seats have been filled up.

Similarly, Najafgarh and Civil Lines zones have admitted 84 and 75 students under the category of the 598 and 601 reserved seats, respectively.

While action can be taken against the schools for not implementing RTE, the civic agency is yet to do that.

“The Delhi government has so far not made a number of things clear as far as implementing RTE is concerned. In such a situation how can we penalisie the schools? said Nagpal.