Patna, March 17: Implementation of Right to Education Act (RTE) has taken a new turn with the state government’s decision to include students belonging to the general category under quota for underprivileged children.
However, only those children in the general categories would be entitled to admission to Nursery or Class I, whose parents have an annual income of less than Rs 2,00,000 a year. According to the RTE Act, 25 per cent of the seats of private schools have to be reserved for the underprivileged children in schools.
Earlier, the term “underprivileged” referred to those belonging to disadvantaged groups such as the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, socially and educationally backward class or such other groups having disadvantages owing to social, cultural, economical, geographical, linguistic, gender or as may be specified by the government notification.
Schools have welcomed this step by the state government. They feel those students will be able to get good education who belong to the general category but are underprivileged at the same time.
A human resource development department official said: “The state government has decided to include students belonging to the general category or the upper class in the underprivileged category whose parents income is not more than Rs 2,00,000 a year. No income limit has been set for those who belong to other categories.”
The principal of Patna Central School, S.P. Singh, said: “The decision is quite a good one and should be welcomed. Students belonging to the general category can also have better chances of admission in big schools.”
Director of Radiant International School C.B. Singh said: “We welcome this decision by the state government. We had parents in the general category and from the underprivileged class seeking admissions under the reserved 25 per cent category, but we had no answer for them. The RTE Act is a boon for the society and the inclusion of having the general category students has doubled the advantages.”
Some schools, meanwhile, had to cancel their admission process to incorporate the general students.
