Bengaluru: School keeps Right to Education(RTE) students out

Bengaluru: Right to Education (RTE) students from the poorer sections of society may by law have gained admission to the fancier private schools in the city, but as 20 of these kids found out, they were treated as outcasts, made to sit outside their classrooms, tended to not by the class teacher, but by the ayah, or the cleaning woman!

As hundreds of parents continued to protest before the Brigade Millennium School in JP Nagar, claiming it was discriminating against their children admitted to it under the  RTE Act Thursday morning, an inquiry ordered by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has found it guilty as charged.

Going by  Block Education Officer,  South 3, Rameshaiah K L, who submitted the report to the DPI, the inquiry has revealed the school management was holding separate classes for  RTE students who are drawn from underprivelegd families,  between LKG and Class I.

"The school teachers claimed they were being taught in  different classrooms as their learning level was not on par with the rest of the students. They were supposedly being coached to catch up," he told Deccan Chronicle.

"Another allegation of the parents is that an ayah (maid) was teaching their children. But the inquiry has found that the woman was promoted as a teacher by the school management after she completed her postgraduation and B.Ed," he said, adding that it had not found any discrimination being made by the school during extracurricular activities between the two categories of students  " RTE students participated with the others in activities like swimming, sports and other games at the school," he said.

The school has been given 24 hours to give its response. It all began Wednesday with a group of parents protesting before the school for separating their children admitted to it under RTE, from the rest, prompting the DPI to order an inquiry by a cluster resource person. 

The enraged parents, who gathered before the school Thursday,  tried to barge into its campus demanding  CCTV footage of the classes being conducted to prove their point, but were stopped by security guards near the gate.

The situation threatened to turn ugly as a few parents claimed they had been abused by the school management. They withdrew their protest only after an assurance by DPI officials that action would be taken against the school.

By evening the management too had held talks with a group of parents and agreed to hold classes for all children in one room and requested them to call off the protest. "They have assured us that there will be no separate classrooms for RTE students from Friday," said a parent.

Total seats (2017-18)
96,908 

Applications received 
1.26 lakhs