Nursery admissions: Schools likely to mint Rs.1200 cr through sale of forms
The forms will be available till January 16.

The time is here when thousands of anxious parents stand in serpentine queues outside popular schools in Delhi , just to pick up a nursery admission form - the sale of which is expected to fetch a revenue of Rs.1,200 crore for these institutions.

Despite efforts by the government and activists to ease the anxiety, little seems to have changed this year for parents who complain of expensive prospectuses, lack of online forms and the points-based admission criteria.

Many popular schools in Delhi said they sold twice the number of registration forms on Thursday compared to the previous days since admissions opened on January 2. The children have to be at least three to be eligible for admission.

There are about 4,500 schools in Delhi and NCR, of which over 2,000 are unaided private institutions which are preferred by parents over government-run ones.

Many parents also complain that all schools distributing forms simultaneously makes things difficult for them as the forms are available only for a couple of hours every day.

The principal of a popular school advises that parents should apply to less well known schools and not just run after the popular ones.

But Sumit Vohra, who started a website admissionsnursery.com after fighting to get his daughter into school, says the process is always stressful for parents.

"Every parent randomly applies for about 30 schools in the city; even then they are not able to get a seat just because of this points-based system," he said.

Under the points-based system, an aspirant is awarded points for various criteria decided by the school such as proximity to the home, parents being alumni and siblings already studying in the institution.

While an admission form costs Rs.25, prospectuses vary from school to school from Rs.100 to Rs.200. Some prospectuses cost more than those of Delhi University and the Indian Institutes of Management.

As per guidelines issued by the Directorate of Education of Delhi, the forms will be available till January 16, and 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.

- With inputs from IANS

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