Court order puts parents in doubt over nursery admission

TNN | Jan 19, 2016, 12.29 AM IST

NEW DELHI: The high court proceedings on the government's latest nursery order on Monday has added to the applicants' confusion.

"There will be a delay now, right," asked Hemant Agarwal who's seeking admission for his son in west Delhi schools. Once an admission matter reaches court, parents fear delays. "Most parents are confused. They had applied in the old format-with the original seat distribution and criteria. After the government order came, they were wondering if they'd have to reapply. Now, they will panic," said Agarwal.

While cancelling the criteria, the government had argued that it will neither impact the admission process nor invalidate forms already submitted. Schools in any case accept far more applications than they have seats and the matter will come up only at the time of tallying points and draw-there is still time for those. Most parents would've selected their schools on the basis of distance first. Agarwal would've benefited from the first-child point -a criterion the government had 'cancelled'-but he didn't have those points in mind while shortlisting the schools.

Though parents fear delay,

School authorities assure they intend to stick to the schedule and that the to-and-fro over management quota will not change anything. "We knew from the start that the matter was in court. No application will be disqualified because of this," said Tania Joshi, principal, The Indian School. "The schedule hasn't been disturbed," added Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International School and chairperson, National Progressive Schools Conference. "The application process will continue till January 22 and the process of allocating and tallying points will happen only after that."

As for the criteria, some changes may be retained. S K Bhattacharya, president, Action Committee for Unaided Recognised Private Schools, had advised schools, which "adopted criteria that aren't transparent or are arbitrary", to change them. "We don't support criteria such as qualification of parents, for instance. Those should be changed," he said. "But what about the schools that had changed their online notices," asked Sumit Vohra of admissionsnursery.com.

For Himant Singhal, seeking admission for his daughter in Paschim Vihar, the order is irrelevant, as more than half the schools he tried to apply to rejected his application. Singhal stays on rent and this year, the registered rent agreement does not feature in the list of documents acceptable as a proof of residence. "Most people will not have a rental address on other documents as they rarely stay in one place for over two to three years. They are forced to move as the rent increases by about 10% every year," explains Singhal. Agarwal has written dozens of mails to various officials and schools on the subject, but to no avail.