EWS admissions in Chandigarh schools set to go online from December 19

Naina Mishra

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Chandigarh, November 1

To facilitate admission of students belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS) and disadvantaged group to entry-level classes in private recognised schools of UT, the Education Department is set to start online monitoring of the process for session 2023-24 by December 19.

As per the existing practice, in accordance with the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, unaided recognised schools admit children belonging to EWS and disadvantaged group in the neighbourhood to entry-level classes. These children constitute at least 25% of the strength of a class, and schools provide free and compulsory elementary education till they complete their studies.

This year onwards, the admission to entry-level classes (nursery/pre-school, KG/pre-primary, class I) for the next academic session in private recognised schools will be done through the computerised online admission system.

For this, parents will have to fill forms through the online system, citing complete details of the child as well as parents, and upload requisite documents. A unique ID will then be allotted to the student.

They will also have the option to choose private schools near their residence, depending upon the distance i.e. schools within 0-1 km, 1-3 km and 3-6 km.

The mapping of distance matrix of all private schools will aid in filling the admission form of the child in accordance with the RTE norms of distance.

A consultation meeting with stakeholders was recently held by the Director School Education with all principals of unaided recognised non-minority schools, wherein the preliminary details were discussed and a software developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was shown to them. The timeline for the process was also discussed i.e. from mid-Dec 2022 to mid-Jan 2023.

Harsuhinder Pal Singh Brar, Director School Education, said: “The portal for online admissions will be active from December 19 onwards. Adequate advertisement will be undertaken by the department to ensure the admission process for the EWS is held efficiently. All schools will have helpdesks to assist with the process. This initiative would aid in bringing about transparency to the admission process and eliminating any erroneous manual interventions.”

Process for entry-level classes

• Parents to fill forms via online portal
• Cite details of child, self
• Upload requisite documents
• Unique ID to be allotted to student

Paperwork required

• Aadhaar card
• Income certificate(attested by Estate Office)

Preference to nearest residents

The portal will first allot admission to applicants residing within 1 km of school. If there are not sufficient number of applicants, the portal will pick those living up to 6 km from the school.

Move towardsonline draw of lots

• With online admission process being introduced, plan is to allot seats through software, instead of manual draw of lots
• NIC’s software team is studying Maharashtra, Delhi and CHB models to adopt online draw of lots mechanism
• As per previous practice,schools manually hold draw of lots through the chit system