Delays in RTE admission creates problems for stakeholders

dmissions under the Right To Education (RTE) Act seem to be heading for yet another controversial year. Technical problems have thrown off the online admission schedule by almost three weeks and there’s still no guarantee that further delays will be avoided.

In the last week of February the education department had announced the RTE admission timetable, which listed details of the entire process to be held in three phases.

First phase was to start on Feb 29 in which schools had to register online in the database being managed by National Informatics Centre (NIC), a government body. This phase has started on Sunday and will go on till March 26 at least if there are no further problems. The second phase, supposed to start on March 11, was where parents had to fill up the admission forms. This now seems likely to start by first week of April. Filling the admission form does not guarantee a seat in schools, it is merely a requirement to participate in the lottery. The lottery is the only way through which admissions can be secured in schools. The third phase will be of the admission lottery itself and that was supposed to be held from April 1. But considering the pace of progress it is likely that this will happen only after April 15.

Dinkar Temkar, a Pune-based education official who is overseeing the entire process in Maharashtra, said, “Our technical problems are being looked at by professionals and we hope to resolve them fully soon. In the meantime we have opened up the registration process for schools on a district wise basis so that the server does not overload at all.”

Schools in city are worried that these delays will now throw their schedule off track and create problems.