NEW DELHI: The directorate of education has written to private schools, stating that they cannot reject students referred by it for admission in Class IX under the Economically Weaker Section category.

For admission in Class IX, the department refers two candidates for each vacant seat and the school can conduct tests and select the eligible candidate.

It is for the first time this year that DoE has conducted online centralised admissions for the seats reserved for children belonging to the EWS category from Class II onwards in private schools built on government land. There are close to 400 schools that have to admit students under this clause. Earlier, the schools used to fill these seats by making forms available offline.

Till Class VIII, it is mandatory for schools to admit 25% of students in this category as per Section 12 (1) (C) of the Right to Education Act.

However, this order was issued for Class IX as schools were rejecting candidates referred by the department with the flimsiest of excuses.

The order states: “Up to Class VIII, all private schools are bound to accept admissions of EWS/DG candidates referred by DoE after draw of lots. Class IX onwards, against each vacant seat of EWS/DG category, two candidates have been referred by DoE, so that these schools may conduct a test and select the better candidate. In no case can a private school reject both the referred candidates against each seat citing that none of them meets the criteria.

Admission of one of the two candidates has to be accepted by the school (sic).” With admissions being centralised for Class II and above for the first time, there were problems in the online system as well as it was automatically assigning age-appropriate classes to students without considering their qualifications

. In one such case, a child who had not passed Class VIII was assigned a seat in Class IX. An upper age limit was set for admission under this category. At a meeting of the education department in April, the issue of private schools built on government land keeping EWS admission on hold also came up for discussion.

The private school branch of DoE has now been asked to ascertain whether “the private schools are supposed to accept 25% EWS/DG admission against their actual or declared general seat

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