The Delhi government is yet to announce the schedule and guidelines for nursery admissions in private schools under the economically weaker section (EWS) category, even as the application process under the open seats started on Wednesday.
All private unaided recognised schools ,except for minority institutions, have to keep 25% of their total seats reserved for EWS category under the Right to Education (RTE). Children whose parents earn less than Rs 1 lakh a year are eligible for admission under the category.
An official from the directorate of education (DoE) said the notification to start the online registration process for EWS category admission will come in second week of January.
“We are collecting data from all schools regarding the number of seats under EWS category to finalize the total seats available. We will announce the schedule in January, but broadly it will be same as open category admission schedule. It will end by March 31,” an official handling DoE’s private school branch said.
Till last year, nursery admission under EWS category were done online for around 1,100 schools that come under the Delhi School Education Act and Rules (DSEAR), 1973. The rest of the schools recognised under the RTE Act, 2009, conducted admission manually by giving out application forms.
However, the DoE official said that this year all 1,700 private schools, are likely to conduct nursery admissions through the online system.
This will mean that parents will fill an online application form after which a computerized lottery will be done to allot schools to applicants.
“Till last year only those schools which were under DSEAR, 1973, had to do EWS admission through centralized computerised lottery system. But now we are likely to include the rest of the schools in the system to have a uniform process for all schools,” the official said.
EWS admissions in nursery classes have been under scanner due to large number of seats remaining vacant. For the last academic year (2017-18) out of the over 27,000 seats under the category, only about 19,000 seats had been filled.
