Right to Education seats can now be sought online
Department has already uploaded all the performas required to apply for free RTE seats
Bengaluru: Students and parents who are seeking free seats in the private unaided schools of the city under the Right to Education (RTE) quota in the upcoming academic year (2015-16) can now apply for seats online.
The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has decided to allow online application of seats for students in neighbourhood schools.
The DPI has even developed a separate software to ease up the process of admission and make all the required data available at a single glance.
According to the RTE calendar of events published by the DPI, it has been proposed to allow the students to apply both online as well as off line.
As the first step, department has already uploaded all the performas required to apply for free RTE seats.
Speaking to this newspaper, an officer from the DPI said that according to the DPI’s decision, a list of schools with RTE seats will be made available on the website after verification with the District Information System for Education (DISE) data.
With all the data available at a glance on the internet, application and following up on the admission process will be made much easier. A separate software has been developed for this purpose.
"According to our experiences over the last three years, every student applies to more than one school under the RTE category.
Allowing them to apply online will help save travel time and related expenditure. However, those who can't apply online can opt for off line mode,' he said.
However, each student can only apply to a maximum of five schools online. When this is done, even offline application will not be permitted.
Calendar of events: Meanwhile, although the DPI has published two calendar of events for RTE admissions in the state for 2015-16, its field level officials have failed to stick to the deadline.
“December 17 was the last date to publish the list of neighborhood schools, which has not been done so far.
December 23 was the last date for filing objections against the tentative list of neighborhood schools list published by DPI.
However, in the absence of the list itself, how can we submit objections?" question parents waiting in line for the RTE seats.
Objections: Activists opposed the DPI's move to opt for the online application process. Speaking to this newspaper, Mr.Nagasimha G Rao, Convenor, RTE task force, said that the measure is irrelevant with regard to the target audience, most of whom are very financially backward and don’t have access to the internet.
Activists in the city held a meeting with Primary and Secondary Education minister Mr. Kimmane Rathnakar on November 20 to counter the decision and were assured that online application would not be permitted.
"Officials are not thinking from poor parent's point of view. Even though applications can be failed off line, at ground level officials forces parents to apply online.
I don't think poor parents have any knowledge about online system and it may force them to spend more money. Many may decide against applying due to this factor," he said.