Week to go for nursery admission, confusion over EWS monitoring

Nursery admissions are scheduled to start in a week but confusion still prevails on how Economic Weaker Section (EWS) quota in private school within PMC limits will be monitored.

The Director of Primary Education had earlier announced that the Zilla Parishad Education Officer will be in charge of monitoring admission of students to fill EWS quota seats in all private schools in the district, including in PMC limits. The PMC Education Board has now been asked to monitor EWS seats in private schools in PMC areas. A PMC education department official, citing a state government notification, however, said they did not have the right to monitor the admission of students to private schools.

On Friday, Deputy Director of Education held a meeting of principals of all private schools at the Balgandharva Auditorium. Principals of over 350 English and Marathi medium schools within PMC limits participated. Deputy Director of Education Suman Shinde, ZP Education Officer Dattatraya Shendkar, and PMC education officer Shivaji Daundkar were present in the meeting.

PMC School Board Chief Shivaji Daundkar said, "The Education Officer of Zilla Parishad has written to us and asked us, on his behalf, to monitor filling of EWS seats in schools in PMC limits. So we called the meeting of principals and have also undertaken several other measures for efficient monitoring."

However, other officials of the PMC Education Board said it would a quite a difficult job for them as the PMC education officer did not have any legal sanction to monitor admission of students to private schools.

"We do not have any legal rights to monitor the admission process," said an official requesting anonymity.

"It's likely that some schools will not allow us to even enter the school premises as the PMC School Board does not have the right to monitor admissions. At the most we can collect information of number of EWS seats in the schools and the status of admission and hand over the data to the ZP CEO," added the official.

ALSO READ

Freeze your wedding memories in 3D video

Hate speech: Pune court asks police to book Owaisi

CCTV cameras bought for CYG ‘vanish’

Kalmadi in troubled waters, rivals ready to make a 'splash'