Pay bribe to get admission in West Bengal School

Value Added Service: Pay bribe to get admission in West Bengal School List to replace lottery - Distance from school, parents’ profile among alternatives

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 09.11.2011

Where you live or what you have studied could play a role in deciding which school would admit your child. The school education department on Tuesday identified probable substitutes for the lottery system of admission and sent the list to the chief minister’s office for final selection. Once a system is selected, it has to be followed by all schools in the state, including the private ones affiliated to Delhi-based boards. The department has simultaneously requested Mamata Banerjee to allow schools to admit students to Class I through a draw of lots one more time. “The new session starts in January. The schools can’t wrap up admissions in time if they are to switch systems at such short notice,” said an official. The schemes in the race to replace the draw of lots — which has been abolished after being followed for 16 years — include random selection (a variant of lottery), distance of the applicant’s home from the school, parents’ interview and points system. In random selection, the applicants are split equally into groups. If there are 2,000 applicants for 100 seats, there will be 20 groups of 100 children each. “The school will randomly select five children from each group,” said an official. In the points system, which is a mix of several criteria, the selection will be based on the educational qualifications of the parents, how far from the school the child lives and whether the candidate’s brother or sister is a student of the institution. “We have identified some criteria which the schools can adopt for selecting students for admission to Class I. The new system will be finalised once we get clearance from the chief minister’s office,” school education secretary Vikram Sen said. Education minister Bratya Basu discussed the options during the day with the heads of some state-run schools. The cabinet had on Thursday decided to abolish lottery as a means to select students for admission. While the 42 state-run schools stuck to lottery for the past 16 years, state-aided and private institutions mostly preferred admission tests. The test option can’t be considered now as it goes against the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act.