Dec. 27: State-aided secondary schools have to admit students to Class V based on merit and not age, education minister Partha Chatterjee said today.

Parents have lodged complaints with the school education department, saying many schools had denied their children admission to Class V even if they fell short of 10 years by one or two months.

An education department official said the Right to Education act made it mandatory for students to be aged above 10 and below 11 to get admitted to Class V.

Minister Chatterjee today met senior education department officials to discuss the matter. "We want every admission to be based on merit. Some children faced problems in collecting the admission forms from various schools for admission to Class V as they didn't fulfil the age criterion."

A circular has been sent to schools asking them to admit students to Class V only on merit.

The department official said schools were not at fault since the RTE act made it clear that the age criterion had to be followed by all state-aided schools.

The act says children aged between five and six should be allowed to study only in pre-primary and those aged between six and seven in Class I.

In most cases, private schools admit students to pre-primary and Class I even if they don't match the age criterion.

Many parents, particularly those who have arrived from the districts where there are few English-medium schools till the secondary level, tend to admit their children to private schools till Class IV.

The reason: they would get elementary English education before being transferred to reputable Bengali-medium schools in Class V.

"Those affected are mostly students from private schools. It is not possible for us to monitor every private school and stop them from admitting children who don't meet the age criterion," another education department official said.

The headmaster of a city school said he had decided not to distribute admission forms to "under-aged" students so that they don't face any trouble during Madhyamik as the Bengal board of secondary education rules say a student must be at least 15 years old to appear in Madhyamik.