E-Paper
Education dept to act against schools defying RTE norms
A day after Bhavan Vidyalaya, Chandigarh, filed its response to the show-cause notice issued to the school for violation of Section 13 of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and withdrew its admission test for Class 6, the education department officials have sprung into action.
A day after Bhavan Vidyalaya, Chandigarh, filed its response to the show-cause notice issued to the school for violation of Section 13 of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and withdrew its admission test for Class 6, the education department officials have sprung into action.
Director public instructions (DPI) Rubinderjit Singh Brar told HT that the department will implement the same orders to other schools who are found violating Section 13 of the RTE.
Throwing light on the same, deputy director (school education) Chanchal Singh said the department is in the process of identifying and subsequently issuing warning letters to other schools in the UT that have been conducting or plan to conduct any sort of screening procedure for admission to Classes 1-8 (6 to 14 years) as per the RTE norms.
As per guidelines issued by the ministry of human resource and development (MHRD) issued in November 2010, the objective of the provisions of Section 13 (1) read with Section 2 is to ensure that schools adopt an admission procedure that is non-discriminatory, rational and transparent and that schools do not subject children and their parents to admission tests and interviews in order to decide whether they will admit the child or not. It further states that the admission tests and interviews are generally a tool for profiling and eliminating children and therefore, screening to assess a child’s intelligence should be prohibited.
As had been highlighted by HT in its report published on December 22 last year, some of the other schools that hold screening procedures include Saupin’s School, Delhi Public School and Chitkara International School. Some of the other school whose websites mention that entrance interviews/assessment are conducted for admission to all other classes include Vivek High School, Sector 38, RIMT World School, Manimajra and Gurukul Global School, Manimajra.
