The state is thinking of withdrawing the ‘admission through lottery’ and ‘first-come-first-admitted’ processes in government primary schools. In the assembly on Monday, state education minister Partha Chatterjee said the lottery-based admission process is hindering the standard of good government schools and added that the government was thinking of bringing back the merit-based admission process.
Replying to a question posed by Congress MLA Asit Mitra, Chatterjee said, “For a school to become good, there have to be good students. Since all the children are admitted through lottery, the schools don’t have the option of choosing students according to merit. Naturally, the standard of the good schools is going down. I shall speak with the chief minister on this issue.”
“We have observed that the number of students in government schools is decreasing since there is a trend to get admitted in private English-medium schools. Even the economically weaker section send their kids to Englishmedium schools,” he added.
Though Chatterjee didn’t specifically mention that the government will withdraw the lottery system, sources said the state is keen to abolish it, along with the first-come-firstadmitted system, particularly from the good schools. The process may happen in phases. “Initially, a portion of the seats may be reserved for meritorious students and the rest will be admitted through lottery,” a government official said.
Educationists are, however, surprised with Chatterjee’s proposal for an alternate mechanism to admit students. “In Bengal, till now, there is an instruction not to hold any screening while admitting students up to Class VIII. Here, lottery is held for pre-primary classes in all schools. In case of some government, government-aided or governmentsponsored schools, which do not have primary classes attached, lottery is done for admissions to Class V,” said a source.
“However, if there are vacancies in higher classes, admissions are allowed. The question of lottery only arises if the supply is more than demand. If there are 10 seats and eight applicants, then all of them will automatically find seats,” he added.
Source: https://goo.gl/YuzAiJ
