No student under RTE quota, 43 Gzb schools get notices

Ghaziabad: The district education department has issued notices to 43 private schools for not admitting a single student under the Right to Education (RTE) Act during the current academic session.
Officials said that the first phase of the RTE admission process began in Feb. Students who were selected in the first phase were allocated seats by April. “Even after 3 months of the process, schools have not taken admission of the kids.We have received complaints of schools denying admission on the basis of insufficient documents. However, the approval process is only completed after checking all the documents of the students after application,” said Sharad Chandra, district coordinator for RTE from the education department.
Out of 5,269 students who have been allocated seats, only 2,840 admissions have been done so far.
Delhi Public School, Vasundhara, Meerut and Indirapuram; Shri Ram Universal School, Loni; DAV Public School in Rajendra Nagar and Pratap Vihar; and DLF Public School are among the schools that received the notices. “If the schools do not respond, the district magistrate will possibly conduct a meeting with the principals,” the official said.
The schools have been sending officials on home visits to verify the economic background of students trying to get admissions under the RTE Act, several parents have alleged. “The RTE Act, 2009 does not allow you to violate the privacy of any parent in the name of physical verification. Your school is demanding unnecessary documents from parents for admission and their right to privacy is being violated by visiting their homes during verification,” read the official notice sent to the schools.
“We were allocated seats in a private school in Indirapuram. However, in April, two people from the school came to my locality and asked my landlord and neighbours about our family. They even wanted to enter our house,” said a parent named Sachin. Several other parents iterated the same as well.