Despite new guidelines, nursery admissions may be chaotic!


PTI | New Delhi

Fresh guidelines may have put an end to the anxiety surrounding nursery admissions in the capital, but experts believe the process is going to be chaotic this year as everything has been left to schools to decide.

They also claim the guidelines issued recently by the Directorate of Education (DoE), Delhi, are "irrational, unjust and violative" of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and may lead to a situation that prevailed some five years ago when there was no regulation on the admission process.

As the guidelines have left everything to the schools to decide, there is much possibility that confusion and chaos will prevail, said former CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly, who had formulated the 100-point system for nursery admissions three years ago.

"The admission process has to be transparent, hassle-free and very objective also. There should have been a clearcut framework given to schools," Ganguly told PTI.

"And, there should be certain aspect of uniformity. It should not be like that some schools have a different format, while others have some other type of format.

"There may have their own parametres, own criteria but there needs to be certain framework which should be uniform," he said.

According to the guidelines, every school needs to keep aside 25 per cent of their seats for children belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS). The selection in this category has to be done through a lottery system.

While for the rest 75 per cent seats, open for children from the general category, schools can either adopt a lottery system or continue with the 100-point system, which is being followed for past three years.

This may include points for having one's sibling in the same school, being the child of a single parent or the alumnus of the same school or transfer cases among others criteria.

But, experts feel this leverage given to schools could lead to manipulation and confusion. And the categorisation allowed for the 75 per cent of the seats is a clear violation of the RTE Act, they say.

"The RTE Act clearly says that you cannot differentiate between two children on any ground. By giving points on grounds like alumni, sibling or say transfer case, you are violating the law," said Ashok Agarwal of NGO Social Jurist, which is planning to file a PIL against it on Monday.

"I believe that the guidelines are issued without the authority and sanctity of law. It is more or less an advisory note and not a statutory guidelines. It has no binding on any one and has no legal consequences," says Agarwal, who is also the president of All India Parents Association (AIPA).

Sumit Vohra, who runs admissionsnursery.Com, an onlineparents' forum, pointed out that the introduction of the alumni category amounts to profiling of parents which is strictly prohibited under the RTE Act.

"On one hand you are banning screening and profiling, on the other hand you are allowing schools to do so by giving points to alumni," Vohra said.

Agarwal also concurred the view and said keeping alumni as a category indirectly leads to profiling and is a violation of the RTE Act.

However, Ganguly didn't agree on this. He said: "Like distance, or neighbourhood, alumni is also a very important aspect of education system. If you are an alumni, you have every right to have some weightage.

"But, the points given to this category should be made public in advance."

Ganguly was the man behind the 100-point system which has been followed by Delhi schools for the past three years. He headed a committee set up by the Delhi High Court to streamline the nursery admissions in the capital.

On the issue of girl child, experts also have some objection. "Suppose, I have a single boy child who neither falls in the category of sibling nor alumni. How will he get admission? Is it a crime to have a boy?" asks Vohra.

Similarly, in the case of 25 per cent reservation some feel that top schools, which on average charge a student over Rs 1 lakh per annum, will try to manipulate the whole idea of providing free education to EWS children.

"Once you get selected in any high-end school, you will remain there till you complete your entire schooling. So, even a poor parent would like to pay some bribe to the school to get a berth for his ward," says Parth Shah, head of Centre for Civil Society, a think-tank that works in this sector.

Increased vigilance and transparency should be the key if the Government wants to avoid such manipulation, Shah added.

The experts also rued over the fact that the guidelines don't speak specifically on neighbourhood, a key aspect of RTE Act, and advocated that it should be made mandatory for all schools across the city.

"There should be a clear cut system so that a parent should know before hand that his child will get admission or not on the basis of given criteria," said Ganguly, who also suggested for a lottery system in the general category for shortlisting a few hundred from thousands of applicants.

"There is a great gap between the demand and supply, the number of schools are very less compared to the applicants. So, by a lottery system, schools can shortlist a few hundred and then apply some criteria, such as distance and alumni, to make the final selection," he added.

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