NURSERY ADMISSIONS DELHI

I was born and bought up in Delhi, and what I remember about the school admissions is that there were not so many rules in 1980’s for getting a child admitted to any of the schools in Delhi. That time parents didn’t have to face de trop problems to admit their child in a decent school. I am an alumni of Manav Sthali School, Rajinder Nagar. And this is the only school I attended. That time I used to live in Ashok Vihar, and most of my cousins used to study in schools like Delhi Public School, Bal Bharti Public School, Army Public School, etc. All of these schools were at a distance of more than 10 kilometer from our home.

Today I also stand among those parents who have been facing problems related to nursery admissions in Delhi. I also have a dream to send my first-born, only daughter Taisha to a prominent school in Delhi. I have already filled the forms of approx 40 schools, and have already saved up a good amount of money. Now, I am keeping my fingers crossed with a hope that my daughter will definitely get admission in one of the best Delhi schools.

Though people in Delhi keep themselves updated about nursery admissions procedures, but the nursery admission process has become a nightmare for every parent living here, and the credit goes to complicated confusing rules, endless criteria list and the never-ending documentation.The controversy-prone nursery admission process in Delhi has undergone several changes in the past and changes are still happening. But the authorities don’t realize that in the spectrum of making things easier, the procedure is getting complicated. Every year in December this nursery admission drama takes place and Delhi Government comes out with a ‘not-so foolproof’ solution. Not actually a solution, rather I would say “all new admission procedure and guidelines” thereby delaying the registration and admission process.

Lets take an example of 2016. Registrations forms for nursery admissions were available from January 1, and last date for submission of form were January 22. Delhi Government made some amendments in nursery admission rules, and made it public on January. Till this time I had already filled and submitted half of the forms. Thanks to the statement issued by Delhi Government these amendments are not going to impact the results and parents who had filled the forms not have to fill the forms again.

This year Arvind Kejriwal lead Delhi Government trying to make things easier by bringing in more transparency. It has decided to crack down on private schools in Delhi flouting admission rules and charging under-the-counter fees in order to clean up the city’s education system plagued by rampant corruption and mismanagement.

According to the proposal issued by Directorate of Education (DoE), “unaided recognized schools should develop and adopt a criteria for admission that is clear, well defined, equitable, non-discriminatory, unambiguous and transparent. Any school demanding a donation in any form would be fined ten times the amount charged, or Rs 5 lakh, whichever is higher. If a school breaks rules by interviewing children or their parents for nursery admissions, it would have to pay Rs 5 lakh for a first offence and Rs 10 lakh for each subsequent violation.”

The amendments made in Right to Education Act 1973 has scrapped the points system. Yes; the points system will not be followed for nursery admissions and only neighborhood criteria (which lets the child go to a school nearest to his/her house) will stay. Also, the schools have been asked to put up all the information online on their respective websites.

The points system is a system where the schools allocate points to a child on the basis of following criteria - distance of residence from school, sibling studying in the school, if a parent is an alumni, if the child is a girl, if child is a first born.

I feel poor state of public schools is the key reason for all this nursery admission chaos. India has been independent for 67 years now, but the government has not been able to administer the problems of public schools. Public schools in India lack basic . If the government takes care of these problems, people would not rush to private schools. Furthermore, making strict rules for private schools will not help much because private schools are doing their bit of social responsibility by offering 25 per seats to economically weaker sections and not charging any fee.

Even with 1,187 private unaided schools, parents still struggle to find a nursery seat for their child. And the nightmare will continue this year too, as the new nursery admission rules framed under the amended Education Act, which ends the points system, will not be applicable until the Indian Government approves it.