Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia has warned pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals found to be en­gag­ing in un­scrupu­lous reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dures which are against the min­istry's reg­u­la­tions that they would be made to an­swer if they were found cul­pa­ble.

In a re­lease late Wednes­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion out­lined the pro­ce­dure to be fol­lowed by prin­ci­pals for the reg­is­tra­tion of stu­dents for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year be­gin­ning in Sep­tem­ber.

Re­veal­ing his per­son­al thoughts up­on see­ing par­ents lin­ing up out­side pri­ma­ry schools in the Ari­ma dis­trict to se­cure ap­pli­ca­tion forms, Gar­cia said that was re­spon­si­ble for his warn­ing as "un­for­tu­nate­ly, there were still some prin­ci­pals who are en­gag­ing in this prac­tice."

At the time, the min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to the fact that par­ents were now forced to line up from as late as 10 pm or as ear­ly as 4 am out­side cer­tain schools to ob­tain a reg­is­tra­tion form.

He ex­plained that be­cause some prin­ci­pals were on­ly is­su­ing a stip­u­lat­ed amount of reg­is­tra­tion forms dai­ly, par­ents were forced to find in­no­v­a­tive ways of se­cur­ing them, thus re­sult­ing in the "de­hu­man­is­ing" prac­tice.

Speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Loinsworth Build­ing, St Clair, yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said a cir­cu­lar had been is­sued to pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals re­mind­ing them of the guide­lines to be fol­lowed re­gard­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of new stu­dents.

He al­so sought to re­mind par­ents there was a cri­te­ria to be ful­filled for stu­dents to be ac­cept­ed in­to their school of choice and that re­ceipt of a reg­is­tra­tion form did not trans­late in­to an au­to­mat­ic ac­cep­tance.

Gar­cia said his min­istry al­so "frowned" up­on pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals stip­u­lat­ing that hope­ful stu­dents had to sit an ex­am or un­der­go an in­ter­view to be ac­cept­ed in­to the re­spec­tive school.

In the re­lease, the min­istry ac­knowl­edged the "un­nec­es­sary stress and hard­ship" faced by some par­ents to reg­is­ter their chil­dren at pub­lic pri­ma­ry schools.

Gar­cia yes­ter­day ap­pealed to of­fi­cials to en­sure that reg­is­tra­tion forms were made avail­able to par­ents over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od and dur­ing nor­mal work­ing hours.

The min­istry has ad­vised that ad­mis­sion lists must be post­ed at the re­spec­tive school and par­ents no­ti­fied by May 15 each year.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, prin­ci­pals have al­so been asked to no­ti­fy par­ents who were un­suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing a place for their chil­dren, as well as the rea­son for the child's non-ac­cep­tance.

Mean­while, par­ents have al­so been asked to note that chil­dren shall be ad­mit­ted to pri­ma­ry school not ear­li­er than the first day of the term in which they at­tain their fifth birth­day and that res­i­dence in the catch­ment area (three km) of the school was the first cri­te­ri­on for ad­mis­sion and re­fusal to ad­mit was per­mis­si­ble on­ly on grounds of over­crowd­ing.

It is to be not­ed that when the num­ber of ap­pli­cants ex­ceeds the num­ber of spaces avail­able, pri­or­i­ty must be giv­en to ap­pli­cants re­sid­ing in the catch­ment area of the school and on the age of the child with old­er chil­dren re­ceiv­ing pref­er­ence.

Par­ents are al­so re­mind­ed that no reg­is­tra­tion fee or fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion is a con­di­tion for ac­cep­tance of a child in­to a pub­lic school.