Parents wary of points system for nursery admissions

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

Despite the Directorate of Education issuing specific guidelines about the nursery admission process earlier this week, parents are wary of the point system-based admissions and believe the creation of various categories by the schools was grossly “unfair”.

Roopa Sharma, who will be seeking admission for her girl child this year, said: “Giving points for alumni is not the right criteria. It seems like a round-about way of ensuring that only a certain group of parents from a particular class can get into certain schools.”

She added, “Last year certain schools asked about the achievements of parents, their contribution to the building of society etc. These are strange questions when seeking admission for a child to nursery class and are clearly more exclusive than inclusive.”

Parents are also hoping that this year there would be some guidelines that would fix the upper limit on the age of eligible candidates which has not happened thus far.

Another parent, Rani Mathur, whose son did not mange to get admission in any good school last year and is hoping for better results this year, said: “The Delhi Government should do more than announcing the dates: the need of the hour is for schools to come out with reasonable admission criteria. The Government too should look at bringing in criteria that benefits the common man. Proximity to the school and the parents’ ability to pay the fee and help the child cope with the school’s academic and other requirements should be enough. Currently the criteria that is being followed is not even reasonable.”

For its part, the Directorate of Education had come out with detailed guidelines which it had insisted would benefit parents seeking admission for their children to nursery for the coming academic session.

The Directorate had noted that it would not leave any room for educational establishments to manipulate dates for sale and submission of admission forms. It had asked all schools to begin the admission process by January 1 and close it by March 30, 2013.

The guidelines had also specified that the last date to submit filled up forms would be January 15 and the schools would be required to post their first list by February 15 (including for the economically weaker section, disadvantage groups and the waiting list).

The second list, if any, the Directorate had noted, would have to be out by February 28.

Also for the first time ‘orphans’ have been included in the disadvantage categories making them eligible for 25 per cent quota for admission in the Delhi schools.

Meanwhile, founder of the website admissionsnursery.com Sumit Vohra insisted that “the notice by the Directorate of Education is not indicative of dates but is a specific guideline to the schools. The uniformity will give parents more time and save them from the hassle of remembering various dates for every school that they have applied to. With most parents applying to more than ten schools this directive has defiantly simplified the process for parents.

• Points for alumni is like round-about way of ensuring selective admissions”

• “Why is there a talk of parents’ achievements, their contribution to society?”

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The guidelines, meanwhile, also state that admission forms are to be made available till the last date of the submission. As for the Economically Weaker Section students, the schools are required to follow the same process as last year with admissions through common forms.

Also educational institutions would have to submit the number of vacancies after first round of admissions to the Directorate by April 6.

As for guardians of children seeking admission under the ‘orphan’ (child without parental support) category, the State Women and Child Development Department has through an order dated December 11, 2012, authorised all Child Welfare Committees (CWC) to issue certificates declaring a child ‘orphan’ under the Delhi Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules, 2009 after the prescribed inquiry process.

However, though the Directorate has toughened its stand on the dates for the admission process it has refused to deviate from the point system-based admissions.

No wonder, the schools across the city have welcomed the move stating that the point system is a clear and confusion-free process.”