RTE server down, info not updated: Mumbai schools

The three city schools that were on the verge of losing their no-objection certificate (NOC) for non-compliance of Right to Education (RTE) Act rules, have blamed the education department for being ‘inefficient'.

While the report put together by the deputy director's office shows how three schools are yet to admit students under the freeship quota of RTE, schools have highlighted how the problem lies in the fact that the RTE admissions server has been down for the past few days, disallowing schools from updating the information online.

"We got the NOC for our school only in the year 2014 and that year itself ten students were allotted seats in our school, all of whom were admitted in Nursery. This year too, 12 students were allotted seats in our school and we have admitted all 12. Clearly the department has not updated their list," said Kavita Sanghvi, principal of MET Rishikul Vidyalaya, Bandra.

She added that of the 15 seats available for the freeship quota at the entry level, those that were not allotted by the education department have been left vacant, as per directions given by the education department. "Even the High Court has cleared this issue. Now the education department needs to get its act together," Sanghvi said.

Last week, mid-day had written about a report put together by the officials of the deputy director of education, which mentions the names of three schools - MET Rishikul Vidyalaya (Bandra), Billabong International School (Santacruz) and Pawar Public School (Bhandup) - for not admitting students from the economically/socially backward classes of society.

Officials from the department mentioned that these names were culled out based on the complaints made by parents whose children were not given admission under RTE. This report was supposed to reach officials at the state education department and the schools flouting the norms were also supposed to face legal action for their mistake.

"We had managed to fill all our seats under RTE at the entry level and there was only one candidate for Std I admissions, who was stuck for sometime. We were waiting for the education department to give us clarity on whether we should admit students in pre-primary as well as Std I," said a spokesperson for Pawar Public School in Bhandup.

She added that since RTE quota admissions are only applicable to entry level classes, they were not sure if they could provide admission to a student in Std I. On Thursday, officials from the school stated that this one particular student has been approved for admissions and will be joining school from next week.

"We haven't managed to update the list because of certain server problems," added the spokesperson. The third school in this list was Billabong International School in Santacruz which was blamed for not admitting students in the pre-primary section.

However, the school's founder/chairperson, Lina Ashar, had already mentioned to this newspaper that the school still doesn't have a pre-primary section, due to which admissions could not be approved. "We have admitted students in Std I under the RTE quota," added Ashar. When mid-day contacted the deputy director of school education (Mumbai region) on Thursday, he confirmed that the RTE online admission server was down for some days.

"There was some upgradation work happening due to which the server was down, but the schools should have ensured that all the admissions that they have allotted should be updated online before the deadline," said B B Chavan, deputy director.