Seven months into the 2019-20 academic session, over 9,500 seats reserved for children from economically weaker section (EWS) and disadvantaged groups (DG) in private schools across the city are still vacant. The Directorate of Education (DoE) has now invited applications for the 10th and final round of admissions to fill these seats.
The DoE has invited applications for 45,000 seats across 1,700 private schools in Delhi, this year. As per the official data, over 21% of these seats are vacant. Under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, 25% of seats in entry-level classes, including nursery, Kindergarten (KG) and I at all private schools are to be reserved for the EWS category.
DoE officials said that the reason behind the vacancies is that less popular schools are located in the outer areas of Delhi. “There are around 100 schools where parents have not even applied and hence these vacancies are still there.” Although, the number of vacant seats this year is far lower than in previous years, the officials added.
Yogesh Pratap, director of education private school branch said, “We have filled around 35,500 seats as of now. There are around 421 pending cases and we have asked the officials in each district to check the status of these cases. We have not received applications against 2,800 of these vacant seats. The situation this year is much better than previous years.”
Around 12,000 seats had gone vacant of the available 48,000 seats, last year. DoE officials said that this year some schools reported a drop in the number of seats in KG and class 1, thereby the number of seats was reduced to 45,000.
For the 10th round of admissions, the online application will be available till November 11 and the admission process for the EWS/DG seats for the next session will begin in January 2020.
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Source: Hindustan Times
Posted in National, News
