EWS students likely to get free education in private schools

Once approved, the proposal will make school education free for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category students in private schools across the country. Till now, the RTE mandates free education of EWS students till class eight.

Students belonging to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category of society may soon be able to access free education in private schools across the country. The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal informed that a proposal has been prepared in this regard and once approved it will make it easy for the students of the weaker of society to get education.

The proposal is still in the pipeline as is yet to be approved. The move is in line with the EWS quota introduced by the government under which students from such background will get 10 per cent reservations across government institutes and jobs. These students get free education till class 8^th after which they are forced to leave school due to high fees.

A petition has been filed in High Court to make education till class 12 free in unaided private schools for the benefit of the economically poor.

The HRD minister also stated that a total of 1,18,983 seats have been created under the quota across central universities, IGNOU, IIM, IITs, NITs, among others, in the year 2019-20 and a total of 95,783 more seats are expected to be added in 2020-21.

Implementing the EWS quota has exposed infrastructure limitations in many educational institutes across India. While the number of teachers, infrastructural funds remains the same, the number of candidates has increased at a staggering rate.