Mumbai: Got your kid into KG? No guarantees of primary admission

In a fine example of the inefficiency of the reservation system in the country, many schools in the city may have to cancel the admissions of a few students in order to accommodate students under the 25 per cent admissions quote under the Right To Education (RTE) for the economically weaker section (EWS). This is forcing the schools to discontinue the admissions of a few students from the Open category.

Even as admissions for pre-primary sections began in October, many schools in the city are not assuring promotion to selected children from senior kg to the 1st grade. As a result, aggrieved parents are running from one school to another to seek admission for their children.

A parent from South Mumbai said, "Earlier, the school would give admission forms which the parents would take home to fill them up and submit the next day. But, now the schools are asking parents to fill the forms the same day in the school itself, and return them immediately. This is all because they don't want parents to click pictures of the admission forms and send it to the media to expose them. The schools are mentioning in the forms that there's no guarantee of a child getting promoted to class 1. When we went to one of the South Mumbai schools to fill the form, we saw read this and were very disappointed."

Jayant Jain, president of Forum for Fairness in Education, said, "Most of the schools still don't guarantee admission of children in class 1 after taking them in pre-primary as they wanted to conduct fresh admissions in class 1 and also fill the 25 per cent quota under RTE. But this is all wrong and this practice should be stopped. Parents first have to buy so many admission forms and spend so much money on them and the prospectus, and yet they have to be insecure about their child's admission."

RIGGED RULES

Experts say most schools, in order to fill the 25 per cent quota under the Right To Education, do not guarantee admissions to kids to the 1st grade despite granting them seats in kindergarten