Edn dept solves 'minority school' issue; more students get seats

RTE confusion

Finally, the Education Department officials are trying to get rid of one of the major obstructions in the successful implementation of the Right To Education Act which was mired in many confusions. The government has declared the names of minority schools in some districts of the State including Dakshina Kannada, to put a break to the arguments over the issue.

As the Right To Education (RTE) Act doesn’t apply for unaided minority schools, during the implementation of the RTE in 2012-13, many education institutions started claiming that theirs is a minority school or theirs is not, according to their benefit.
It became a headache to the officials to divide aided /unaided schools as minority schools on the basis of language or community.        

Minority schools in DK

According to the available information, there are 111 minority schools in the district out of 476 schools, which means 23.31 per cent of the schools come under minority category. The Sullia block has two schools (aided) belonging to religious minorities.

Puttur block has 14 religious minority schools, while Moodbidri block has 14 linguistic/religious minority schools. Belthangady block has 14 religious minority institutions and four linguistic minority schools. Mangalore (South) has 22, and Bantwala also has 11 religious minority schools. More than any other blocks, Mangalore (North) has 35 schools, where most of them are religious minority schools.  
Speaking to Deccan Herald, Education Coordinator and RTE Nodal Officer Prakash said that these schools won’t come under the Article 12 1(C) of the RTE Act, where schools have to reserve 25 per cent of the total number of available seats to SC/ST and students from backward classes. Hence, confusion is solved at least temporarily about the minority students in the district. For many other districts, the confusion still prevails. One can visit www.schooleducation.nic to know the names of the schools.

‘Few didn’t get chance’

Though few schools could not fill the reserved seats, many schools received enough applications. We selected students through lottery system, tried our level best to help them. Though they had to submit caste, income certificates and address proof in the beginning itself, we gave them an opportunity to submit them during the admission. We were helpless in some cases as we had to meet the deadline, he  said.

More students under RTE

As many as 768 students were admitted under RTE Act in Dakshina Kannada district in 2012-13, but this year (2013-14), 1,142 students have come under the protection of the Act. In Mangalore (North) 183 students, Moodbidri- 92, Bantwala- 339, Puttur- 200, Belthangady-71, Sullia-22 and in Mangalore (South) 235 have been admitted under RTE. This year, 44 kids have been admitted to pre-primary schools under RTE in the district, where 38 students got admission in Sullia and 6 students in Belthangady. Meanwhile, the district has saved Rs 65,194 from last year for this year, the education department staff Shivkumar told Deccan Herald.