Bindu Shajan Perappadan
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Parents queue up outside Springdales School to purchase admission forms for nursery classes in New Delhi on Monday. Photo: R.V.Moorthy
The Hindu Parents queue up outside Springdales School to purchase admission forms for nursery classes in New Delhi on Monday. Photo: R.V.Moorthy

Delhi's gloomy Monday morning which was accompanied by shallow fog seemed to reflect the mood of the parents who queued up outside popular city schools on the first day of sale of nursery admissions forms in the city.

“It is a very nervous wait outside school to buy the forms and submit it. Going by news reports of the past few years we are preparing to apply in at least 20 schools as there is no guarantee of getting admission into a neighbourhood schools with schools allocating points to alumni, siblings, first born etc. The rush is massive going by the number of people who are coming to buy the forms on the first day of their sale,” said K. M. Rao, who had taken a day off from work to collect forms from various schools.

As per the guidelines issued by Directorate of Education of Delhi, the admission forms will be made available from January 2 to 16, and the entire process will have to be completed by March 31.

The schools will have to publish the first list of selected candidates by February 1 and second list by February 28. Delhi has about 2,000 private schools and 350 aided schools which are taking in students for nursery for the academic year 2012-2013.

“It's important for parents to be punctual as they have to queue up outside the school. We can't issue forms after the scheduled time,” said Springdales School, Dhaula Kuan, principal Jyoti Bose.

All schools began the sale of their admission forms around 8-30 in the morning and continued till late afternoon. “There has been a huge rush for admission forms since morning,” added Ms. Bose.

Ahlcon International School, Mayur Vihar, principal Ashok Pandey said: “We have had over 400 registrations, 300 in general category and over 150 in EWS category today. We are excepting at least 2,000 applications this year.”

Several schools have also started online registration to avoid the rush outside school gate. “Many schools also reportedly flouted the Delhi Government's order of not forcing parents to buy the school prospectus. Several schools in the Capital forced parents to buy admission forms along with the schools prospectus despite protest by the parents. There is also no uniformity about the admission criteria this year as schools have been allowed to go with lottery system or categorisation of parents along with taking on point-based admission,'' said Mr. Sumit Vohra, founder of a website on nursery school admissions in Delhi .