Nursery admissions: Points system makes parents busy

By Shreya Roy Chowdhury, TNN | Dec 15, 2012, 02.07 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Now that the nursery admission guidelines, posted on Thursday, have given schools freedom to choose the admission process and parameters for points, Kishan Singh is "analyzing the bus routes." The points system has parents working out the mathematics of their chances and many don't like the odds. School authorities and parent-activist groups find themselves on opposite sides of the matter, and this year, the guidelines are in favour of the schools.

Living in Narayana Vihar with few "good" schools he's interested in close by and no hope for sibling or alumni points - his daughter's a first-born and the family's from Lucknow - Singh has drawn up a list of 20 schools. He is not being paranoid. Mehak Bagga, based in East Patel Nagar (also west Delhi) had applied at 23 last year and failed to secure a seat for her first-born son; their family had come from Punjab. Singh's aiming for the Pusa Road ones; failing that, Punjabi Bagh ones; failing even that - and this is where bus routes come in - the Vasant Kunj ones. He will get points for first-born, for girl child and, if the schools offer such a thing, for being on the bus routes.

But typically, the large amounts of points for siblings and alumni queer the pitch. As Sumit Vohra of admissionsnursery.com puts it, the nursery admission "is like the film industry." "If you don't have a parent who went to the school or an elder sibling, you can't enter," he says. "Giving points for alumni is indirect screening by schools," he argues, "And it discriminates between the educated and uneducated parents which RTE does not allow." Some schools chose to grant points even to groups like vegetarians, members of a certain sect, parents who are willing to opt for school transport. Girls get points; boys don't. One despairing parent writes on Vohra's site, "I'm losing hope now [and] really don't want to go through this process of admission....I don't think that I will be able to make it as I will lose on girl child, sibling, alumni and on distance (all good schools are far off)."

"The main problem is that the points for distance are very few," says Sreeju Krishnan, helping Singh with the process, "The points for alumni and siblings are much more." "I have a friend who lives in the same sector as the school, got full marks for distance but was still trumped by candidates with alumni and sibling points," says Surina Sehgal who'll be trying for her younger child, a girl, this year.

Sehgal, based in Dashrathpuri, too has geography against her. There are no schools she'd want to send her kid to close enough to win her points. The distribution of "good" schools in the city is far from even. "It depends on where the school sets its limits," she says. She is hoping for the older Dwarka schools. "[She] won't have distance, alumni or siblings," but is still "reasonably relaxed" as her son is in a Dwarka school and her daughter stands a good chance of getting in there.

Social Jurist and lawyer, Ashok Agarwal, who had filed the PIL against the points system (it'll be heard next in mid-January), has for long argued for neighbourhood - the system currently followed for EWS category - and draw of lots.

Many schools do draw lots - but after dividing the seats into categories. "They've turned it into a kind of reservation with quotas for alumni, for siblings and the management quota with a big question mark over it," says Agarwal. What often gets in the way of the neighbourhood system, interestingly, is parental aspiration. Agarwal is not particularly sympathetic to the parents' need to admit their kids into "good" - or "branded" - schools. Rather, he endorses the fiercely practical approach Amit Aggarwal of Janakpuri has. "I am looking to get points for neighbourhood and for first and girl child. I am not going for brand," he says, "If I do, chances will be very low." He had hoped the guidelines would direct schools to give more weightage to the neighbourhood criterion but no such luck.

"The approach," argues the lawyer, "should be child-centric, not parent or institution-centric. In the current system, the child is not even in the picture."

Navbharat Times dated  Dec 15