Dont exclude minority schools

COIMBATORE: While hailing the Supreme Court’s approval, activists and academics are dissenting the exemption granted to minority-administered schools. “Unaided minority schools should not have been exempted from the mandate of the Act. The real purpose of the RTE Act cannot be achieved by providing such exemptions,” asserted P B Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary, State Platform for Common School System. Former Manonmaniam Sundaranar University VC and Tamil Nadu Institute of Human Rights Education chairperson V Vasanthi Devi agrees. “Unaided minority institutions can perhaps provide 25 per cent of the seats to the backward sections from their own community,” she argued.