An­na-Lisa Paul

Par­ents who have to line up for hours out­side pri­ma­ry schools seek­ing to en­roll their chil­dren has been de­scribed as out­ra­geous and ridicu­lous by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

Gar­cia said, "This is to­tal­ly un­fair to par­ents. Prin­ci­pals must stop this and put things in place to en­sure forms are made avail­able to those de­sirous of hav­ing their child at­tend the school."

The Min­is­ter ad­vised that reg­is­tra­tion should be done dur­ing the months of Feb­ru­ary and March with­in reg­u­lar school hours. Fol­low­ing the se­lec­tion process, stu­dents would be­gin the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2017/2018 from Sep­tem­ber.

Speak­ing on Sun­day, Gar­cia blast­ed school prin­ci­pals who had im­ple­ment­ed reg­is­tra­tion poli­cies which saw par­ents lin­ing up from as ear­ly as 4 am in some ar­eas, hop­ing to se­cure a form so that they could reg­is­ter their child at the par­tic­u­lar school.

He said this pro­ce­dure was "de­hu­man­is­ing" and "dis­gust­ing."

In a press re­lease last week, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is­sued a warn­ing about the prac­tice that had de­vel­oped over the years and which had led to many, if not all par­ents and guardians, be­com­ing stressed and frus­trat­ed.

He said one of the caus­es for such oc­cur­rences was the lim­it­ed num­ber of ad­mis­sion forms be­ing made avail­able to par­ents by some prin­ci­pals. Gar­cia said the ac­tion had led to a cer­tain in­dig­ni­ty and in­sist­ed it be dis­con­tin­ued im­me­di­ate­ly.

In a cir­cu­lar mem­o­ran­dum to the prin­ci­pals of all pri­ma­ry schools, the Min­istry di­rect­ed that all ad­mis­sion lists be post­ed at the school and par­ents no­ti­fied by May 15.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, prin­ci­pals have al­so been man­dat­ed to no­ti­fy par­ents whose chil­dren are un­suc­cess­ful in se­cur­ing a place at the school the rea­son(s) for their non-ac­cep­tance.

Liv­ing in the catch­ment area, with­in three kilo­me­tres of the school, is the first cri­te­ri­on for ad­mis­sion and re­fusal to ad­mit is per­mis­si­ble on­ly on the grounds of over­crowd­ing.

When the num­ber of ap­pli­cants ex­ceeds the num­ber of spaces avail­able, the Min­istry said pri­or­i­ty must be giv­en to ap­pli­cants re­sid­ing with­in the catch­ment area of the school, tak­en along with the child's age.

How­ev­er, old­er chil­dren were or­dered to be giv­en pref­er­ence in this in­stance.

More­over, the Min­istry said chil­dren shall be ad­mit­ted to pri­ma­ry school not ear­li­er than the first day of the term in which they at­tain their fifth birth­day; and par­ents are al­so re­mind­ed that no reg­is­tra­tion fee or con­tri­bu­tion is to be a con­di­tion for ac­cep­tance of a child in­to a pub­lic school.