Bhubaneswar: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire education has shifted to online along with admissions. It may have hugely helped the urban students, the students in rural pockets of the state and from economically weaker sections (EWS) found it difficult to adapt to the refurbished system.
Only about 5,000 students registered for admission till date, which is a shade over 12 per cent of the enrolment achieved in the last academic session.
The School and Mass Education department had opened a dedicated portal ‘RTE Paradarshi’ earlier this year for admission of the EWS students to private schools under Right To Education (RTE). The RTE mandates 25 per cent seat reservation for these students.
The principal reason for fewer admission is the lack of awareness of the online process and access to the internet, computers and mobile phones among poor families. The registrations closed on June 30.
Only about 4,462 schools and 5,115 students have successfully registered on the portal till Thursday. The situation is so pathetic that three districts have student registrations in single digits — Boudh (1), Malkangiri (3) and Sonepur (8). The highest number of registrations were done from Khurda district (541) followed by Jharsuguda (377), reported The New Indian Express.
According to the paper’s sources, a total of 46,000 seats were offered to students from disadvantaged groups in private schools across Odisha.
The government move to shift to online platforms earned criticism from activists. “How does one expect the poor families and children, many of them first-generation learners, to have access to mobile phones or money to visit a computer centre amid this lockdown to enrol in the website,” social activist Ghasiram Panda was quoted as saying by TNIE.
“It is the government’s duty to identify the beneficiaries and register them in the portal besides ensuring that private schools do not sell these seats in case they remain vacant for whatever reasons,” former OSCPCR chairperson, Kasturi Mohapatra was quoted as saying by the paper.
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