The High Court on Tuesday in a verdict declared admission of 169 overage children to Class I of Viqarunnisa Noon School and College in Dhaka this academic year illegal.
The court also asked the principal of the school to remove the and enrol the waiting children in the class in 15 days following the admission rules set out by the education ministry in 2023.
The bench of Justice JBM Hassan and Justice Razik-Al-Jalil pronounced the verdict after disposing of two writ petitions鈥� one by some parents of 137 children, who are on the waiting list and another by the parents of disqualified students.
The bench constituted a three-member committee, headed by an additional secretary of the Secondary and Higher Education Division of the education ministry to find out perpetrators and bring them to the justice for making faulty online admission process which allows overage children to apply for the admission.
The other two members include one representative from the Dhaka Education Board and an Information and Technology expert from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
The court observed that there was a loophole in the admission rules that allowed children of six years and above to apply for the admission through a lottery.
The admission rules did not limit the upper and lower age limit resulting in admission of the overage children, the court observed.
The court observed that children under six years of age and above seven years of age would be ineligible to apply for the admission.聽聽聽聽
The court observed that there was connivance between the school and some guardians, who took undue advantage of the weak online admission system.
The court further observed that parents could not avoid their responsibility for dropping their children from the school due to overage as they were aware of the admission rules.
The court observed that if the disqualified children were allowed to continue in the school, the children who are on the waiting list would be deprived of their rights to education.
The children aged six years or above are qualified to apply for admission in Class 1, according to the policy set out by the education ministry.
The 169 children were aged between eight or nine years, the court observed.
Of the 169 dropped children, 10 were born in 2015 while 159 others were born in 2016.
The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education asked the institution鈥檚 principal on February 27 to inform the directorate after cancelling the admission of the children.聽聽
And the school later cancelled admission of the 169 children and the directorate submitted the list of the children to the High Court on March 6 complying with its directive issued on January 23.
Lawyer Mustafizur Rahman Khan appeared for the dropped students and lawyer Shamim Sarder represented the waiting students.
The School was represented by lawyer Rafiul Islam.
