Awareness drive on Right to Education online admissions

With admissions to seats under the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act in the State going online for the first time this year, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has asked all Deputy Directors of Public Instruction (DDPIs) and Block Education Officers (BEOs) to conduct awareness drives to better acquaint parents with the process.

Speaking to Deccan Herald on Monday, Mohammed Mohsin, Commissioner, DPI, said: “The DDPIs and BEOs should conduct the awareness drive at every level, be it at the district or taluk level. They can take the help of local NGOs in this.”

Mohsin said that handbooks highlighting the steps with regard to the process of admission to RTE seats have also been given.

“The handbook lists all necessary steps for both online and offline admissions. The same will be used by DDPIs and BEOs in conducting their drives,” he said.

An official from the department said that DDPIs and BEOs have been instructed to give wide publicity to the process of RTE (both online and offline) admissions.

“It depends on the BEOs how they want to organise their awareness drives. It may be by way of conducting awareness camps or through other measures. However, the message should reach the poorest of the poor,” he said.   

H B Manjunath, DDPI, South Bengaluru, said: “We are having a district-level meeting of headmasters and BEOs tomorrow (Tuesday). We will decide about conducting such awareness drives in the meeting. Once decided, I will issue guidelines to CRPs (cluster resource persons) and BRCs (block resource persons) to carry out an information drive.”

Ever since the news about RTE admissions going online was announced, there has been a number of apprehensions about the move from parents and NGOs.
 Many of them claimed that online admissions would not help the poor who have no knowledge about the Internet and computers.