Massive rush on first day of nursery admissions season
New Delhi, Jan 2, (PTI) :

The first day of nursery admissions today saw a massive rush of parents seeking a seat for their tiny tots in prominent schools of the city.

Long queues were witnessed at many schools in the city as parents wanted to get the forms on the very first day of the admisssion season this year to avoid further rush.

The selling of forms in many schools began at around 8:30 in the morning and continued till late afternoon.

"There has been a huge rush for admission forms since morning," said Jyoti Bose, Principal of Springdales School, Dhaula Kuan.

"More than 800 forms have been sold today, and we expect similar trend in the days to come too," she told PTI.

Ashok Pandey, Principal of Ahlcon International School, Mayur Vihar, that has made the selling and submission of admission forms online witnessed more than 450 registrations today.

"There have been over 450 registrations, 300 in general category and over 150 in EWS category today," Ashok Pandey, principal of the school, said.

"If the same trend continues, we except no less than 3000 applications this season," he said.

An official at Laxman Public School, Hauz Khas, said more than 500 forms have been sold on the first day.

As per the guidelines issued by the Directorate of Education of Delhi, the forms will be made available from January 2 to January 16.

However, many schools will stop the sale even earlier which may cause difficulty to many parents.

At St Francis School, a reputed school at Janak Puri, application forms will be available till January 6 and submissions will begin from January 7 to continue till January 12.

There are many such schools which have tweaked their admission schedule for unspecified reasons.

"This is not only a violation of DoE guidelines, it may cause great difficulties for parents of that region," says Sumit Vohra, founder of parents' forum admissionsnursery.com.

Agreeing with Vohra, Pandey of Ahlcon International school said, "I am unable to understand what benefit a school can get by violating the norms.

"As per DoE guidelines, the entire process of admission 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.

There are about 4,500 schools in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR), of which over 2,000 are unaided private schools which have been the first preference of parents.