Sibling points for nursery admission continue in 2012

Parents who have one of their young children in school may heave a sigh of relief. Schools in the Capital will give ‘sibling points’ higher priority in the next nursery admission season, making it easier for their younger children to get into the same school as the elder child.

Sibling points are the weightage that a school accord to children seeking admission, if their siblings are already admitted in the same same school. Many city schools feel that the sibling point is very important in shortlisting children.

“Though equal amount of weightage is given to all the points, the sibling point is a very important category for us. The parents have to understand that if the child's sibling is studying in our school, we will try to accomodate the other child too as no other school will take him/her,” said Amita Mulla Wattal, principal of Springdales School, Pusa Road.

The Directorate of Education (DoE) in the recent nursery admission guidelines have allowed schools to decide what number of points to allott to which category as long as they follow Right To Education (RTE) act.

The categories are allumni,sibling,transfer case,single parent, management, girl child and Economically Weaker Section (EWS). As per DoE rules, the schools have to keep aside 25 per cent of the seats for students belonging to EWS.

According to Sumit Vohra, founder of an online forum for parents seeking nursery admission for their children, V R ONE, most of the schools have reserved 20 per cent of the seats for management, the rest 55 percent seats meant for general category has a 100 point system. Out of this 55 percent, 15 percent comes under the lottery system.

“It is upto the schools descreetion to add or substract points from allumni and sibling category. The schools can give 25 points each to both (sibling and allumni) categories or they can change it to 30-20 depending on their own descretion,” Vohra informed. Schools feel that sibling point is an important factor in shortlisting children citing reasons like convenience for parents and helpful for children. “It is seen that if the elder child is in the same school, it helps the younger child in terms of guidance, protection and support.

As far as parents are concerned school timings and schedule of buses, school functions, holidays etc will become convienient. And for us since we already know the background one child so it gets easier for us too in selecting students,” said one of the personal secretary to the principal at Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan, KG Marg on conditions of anonymity. Officials at Gyaan Bharti School, Saket and Apeejay School, Sheikh Sarai hold similar views.

Admission difficult

Vohra feels since guidelines for the next nursery academic year are similar to last year’s, admissions of general category students in nursery will again be difficult.“Almost 50 points are alotted to allumni and sibling which is a huge chunk, so if I have an only child and I am not an allumni of the school my child's chances go crashing down,” said parent Arti Jain who applied in 21 schools last year but her child was not shortlisted in any school.