Navbharat Times 28 Dec 2012
Education board makes U-turn on 4-yr age limit
The state advisory board for education said on Thursday that it has withdrawn its decision of capping the upper age limit for nursery admissions as four years.
The board held a meeting to review its decision after resentment from parents and educationists who argued that a year’s gap between the upper age and lower age limit for nursery admissions is “way too less.”
“It was decided during the meeting that the decision taken by the board earlier on upper age limit as four years should be considered as null and void. We will follow the same norms as last year,” said R C Jain, a members of the advisory board committee.
According to last year’s norms, the lower age limit for admission in nursery was three years. The earlier clause said, “The ages stipulated for entry into class 1, pre-primary and preschool are the minimum ages and there is no bar to children older than the ages specified in this clause being given admission to these classes.”
Due to absence of an upper age limit imposed by the government, considerable confusion has prevailed in the past as age criterion varies across schools in Delhi and NCR.
Several schools had put up notices which said that minimum age for admission in KG will be four years and in class 1 will be five years and kept a year’s gap between the lower and upper age limit, which is likely to be followed by schools this year as well.
The board had recently decided that “for preschool, the child should not be more than three years, 11 months and 30 days, as on March 30 of the start of academic year in which the admission is sought.”
Several parents had protested against this decision and even written a letter to the Directorate of Education asking the department to review it.
Sumit Vohra, founder of nurseryadmissions.com, had argued that the upper cut off age for all entry level classes from Nursery to class 1 should have a minimum difference of two years.
He said, “As per the Right to Education Act, students applying under the economically weaker sections are mostly covered between 6 to 14 years. If upper age limit would have been fixed EWS children would not have been able to get admission.”
On behalf of parents, Vohra has been urging the Directorate of Education to include parent representatives in the advisory board.
Khagesh Jha, lawyer and RTE campaigner said the government is supporting the private school lobby and did not want to intimidate that its own notification in 2007 does not permit schools to fix the upper age limit.
It was also decided in the meeting that a separate committee will be formed to look into the age criterion for the 2014-2015 academic year. Some private schools had argued that the lower age limit should be increased. But Kiran walia, Delhi’s education minister, who chaired the meeting said it cannot be done as the admissions are to begin.
The Delhi government has backtracked on its decision to set an upper age limit for admission to nursery ahead of the admission season.
In a meeting of the Delhi School Education Advisory Board held on Thursday, the prior order to fix the upper age limit at 3 years 11 months and 30
days was withdrawn. This order was passed on December 19.
The withdrawal of the order means that schools are free to set their own upper age limit if they want, just like they did last year. The minimum age limit, however, will have to be maintained at 3+. The directorate of education has promised action against any school that violates this guideline.
"After we passed the order on upper age limit last week, we received a number of representations from schools saying that the order has come very late in the day and that the management committees have already made the decisions that they had to. The order has been withdrawn as of now but we will revisit it for the next admission season," said Amit Singla, director, Education.
The advisory board has agreed to setting up a committee for the academic year 2014-15 to look into the maximum and minimum age criteria for nursery admission.
Schools and parents, meanwhile, are happy with the status quo. "The earlier order was passed too late and schools were having a problem complying as most of us had brought our prospectuses and uploaded the attendance scheme on the websites," said MS Rawat, member of the advisory board and general secretary of Federation of Private Schools, Delhi.
Parents, too, have heaved a sigh of relief as the earlier order left out a lot of children who couldn't get admission in nursery last year.
"There are a number of parents whose children could not get admission last year and the previous order was disastrous for them as it meant that their children would have to take admission in KG where the number of seats is few. There should be a gap of at least two years between the minimum and the maximum age for admissions like it is in Kendriya Vidyalayas. Also, the admission in KG should be more transparent," said Sumit Vohra, founder, admissionsnursery.com.
