NEW DELHI: The National Progressive Schools' Conference made public on Saturday a batch of nursery admission guidelines-and schedule-it has decided to follow. According to its decision, "distribution and collection of forms should open between December 20, 2014, and January 20, 2015", draw of lots for the 25% EWS seats should be between January 25 and February 5, 2015, and the whole process should be wrapped up by March 31, 2015. There are over 1,200 private unaided schools in the city, of which about 80 are members of NPSC.

The guidelines "advised" by NPSC say, "[neighbourhood/distance] should be one of the criteria, for which each school can decide the points keeping in mind their own specific requirements and catchment areas", "points must be allocated for siblings", and there should be "points for alumni as per specific requirement of each school" and full effort to "bring in children with special needs as a social responsibility". The 5% seats for staff wards and 20% management quota also stay.

There is also a batch of "optional" categories including "single parent", "girl child", "first-born child" and "minority". The guidelines categorically forbid interviews for admission (the Ganguly Committee had been against it too), ask schools to charge Rs 25 for registration and say "there should be no sale of brochure or any money charged for the same".

NPSC schools constitute only a small part of the total number of private schools in Delhi but, as its chairperson Ameeta Mulla Wattal points out, "NPSC is 40 years old and its members are the schools everyone tries to get in." She clarifies that these guidelines are meant only for the non-minority private unaided institutions that are part of NPSC and that decisions were taken collectively by about 75 principals.

NPSC's guidelines have confused at least some parents. In a bid to self-regulate, an umbrella body for school associations-the Action Committee for Unaided Recognized Public Schools-had also constituted a committee of principals to formulate guidelines. "Parents now want to know what action will be taken against a school violating these guidelines and who will take it," says Sumit Vohra of admissionsnursery.com.

Interestingly, the high court order permitting schools to take such decisions independently has already been challenged in court by both the government and a group of lawyer-activists collectively called Social Jurist. That case is coming up for hearing on December 8. Padmini Singla, director, education, doesn't want to respond just yet. "We have contested the order. Let's wait and see what happens on Monday," says Singla. "Common guidelines will be framed by the special committee after the decision of the court," says Bharat Arora of Action Committee. But, as president S K Bhattacharya said earlier, these will only be "morally binding", not legally so.