The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has directed that guidelines for admission to Kendriya Vidyalaya be amended to ensure priority for a foster child if the foster parents are eligible to claim admission under the State government-employee category.
The commission, comprising chairperson Manoj Kumar K.V. and members Fr. Philip Parakatt P.V. and K. Nazeer, also directed the Secretary of the Department of School Education and Literacy to issue an order treating a foster child equal to a biological one in the matter of admission to Kendriya Vidyalaya.
It was acting on a petition from a State government employee seeking the commission’s intervention to secure admission for her foster child in the school that her biological children studied in.
The complainant had given care and protection to a girl child under the foster care scheme and was ready to take her under long-term foster care. She had submitted an application for the admission of her foster child to Kendriya Vidyalaya, Ramavarmapuram, where her children studied under the quota reserved for State government employees. However, she feared that her foster child would be denied admission on the ground that legal adoption had not taken place and the girl did not have a birth certificate.
The Deputy Commissioner of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan at the Ernakulam regional office, in a report, said the foster child’s online application was not submitted under the Right to Education Act, and hence she was not considered in the lottery list for RTE.
Since she came under service category 3 (State government employees) and 23 seats had been allotted from the lottery list of service categories 1 and 2, she was not eligible for admission under the service category.
Her birth certificate or the service certificate of the parent too had not been produced. There was no provision in the admission guidelines for 2021-22 for giving admission to children of foster parents under sponsoring agency quota, the report said.
The commission said that once a child is given to a family under the foster care programme, all rights and privileges of a child living in a family should be given to the foster child too. A foster child should not be denied the right to seek admission to Kendriya Vidyalaya under the service category if the foster mother/father was eligible to claim the same. A child should also not be denied admission to a school for lack of age proof.
The KVS Deputy Commissioner and the Principal of the Kendriya Vidyalaya concerned should make arrangements to consider the foster child of the complainant for priority in the matter of admission to the school, the commission said.
