School admission procedure should be “non-discriminatory, rational, transparent”

The human resource development (HRD) ministry said on 25^th November that under the right to education (RTE) act, admission procedures need to be "non-discriminatory, rational and transparent".

A ministry press release mentions that the schools need to adopt an admission procedure which is non-discriminatory, rational and transparent. The schools also are not to subject children and their parents to admission tests and interviews to socially profile children for an admission decision.  We quote “With regard to admissions in class I (or pre-primary class as the case may be) under section 12(1) of the RTE Act in unaided and 'specified category' schools, schools shall follow a system of random selection out of the applications received from children belonging to disadvantaged groups and weaker sections for filling the pre-determined number of seats in that class, which should not be not less than 25 percent of the strength of the class”.

Each school (unaided or specified category) is required to formulate a polity under which the admissions take place for the remaining 75% of the seats.

The release also mentioned "This policy should include criteria for categorization of applicants in terms of the objectives of the school on a rational, reasonable and just basis. There shall be no profiling of the child based on parental educational qualifications. The policy should be placed by the school in the public domain, given wide publicity and explicitly seated in the school prospectus”.

Part of this regulation is what Mt. Carmel school at Anand Niketan violated, and thus got pulled up by the authorities as we mentioned in our previous post.