Mumbai: After confusion over quota, junior college admissions to start next week

After delays due to the confusion over the implementation of the Muslim and Maratha quotas during First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions, the education department has decided to start the online admissions process next week. Usually, this process starts in March.

The office of the deputy director of education told this paper that the details of the online admissions have been explained to school principals through a workshop, and students would receive the admission booklets by next week. Officials confirmed that students could start filling up the dummy forms within the next fortnight.

"This year the FYJC admissions got delayed due to confusion over the implementation of the Muslim and Maratha quotas. If the quotas were to be implemented, we would have had to incorporate the same during junior college admissions. Therefore, we had no choice but to wait and see," said B D Phadtare, deputy director of education (school).

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While there is still no clarity over whether to implement the Maratha quota or not, the Muslim quota was scrapped in March. Neither of the quotas will be included as of now. "We started the admission process in March, which otherwise commences in January itself. Even though there has been a delay, we expect things to go smoothly," said Phadtare.

While the education department insists that the admissions process will not get delayed further, schools are worried that the existing delay will cost all stakeholders dearly. "Several students have already left for vacations and will not be available for a while. This means that schools will have to conduct training programmes all over again once these students return," said a teacher from a Santacruz-based school.

Schools usually conduct workshops for their Std X students to explain to them the online admission process. These sessions are usually held after the preliminary papers. However, despite the delay in providing admission booklets to students, education department officials claimed they were confident about everything falling into place once the online admissions begin next week.

They confirmed that the online process remains unchanged. The admission process Every year, Std X students are allowed to fill up one part of the admission form once their exams are over, followed by a dummy form. The second and the final part of the form is filled up only after the SSC results are declared.

While schools are now gearing up to get in place a system to help all their Std X students to seek admissions, junior colleges have already finished their process of registering students on the admissions website."Colleges took less than two days to finish the registration process for online admissions.

The bigger problem is if the schools haven't received the admission booklets, which delay the admission process," said Marie Fernandes, principal of St Andrew's College, Bandra. The first phase of the application process has already begun, wherein students fill up dummy forms to get an idea of the admission process.

"Schools have been asked to train students in this process and also approve all their documents necessary for admission. This process should begin next week, because all students will have a copy of the admission booklets by then," added Phadtare.