New Delhi, Jan 3 (IANS) In what can be called a maddening rush, anxious parents Monday queued up outside private schools in the capital on the first day of sale of forms for nursery admissions. Some of them were left confused by the process which is based on a points system.
Under the points system, students would be selected on the basis of points scored by them and their parents. They would be awarded points for various parameters decided by the school, including proximity of their home to the school and siblings studying in the institution.
There are special provisions for single parent. Some schools have also decided to give weightage to the parents’ educational background.
‘I don’t know how a degree from IIT, IIM or my being a doctor will help my child in nursery admission,’ said Mini Srinivasan, an anxious mother who had come to buy the admission form at Salwan Public School in central Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar.
‘It is even mentioned in the points system that if a parent has any ‘special achievement’ such as national or state award to his or her credit (they would get higher points),’ she said.
‘We plan to apply to nearly 15 prominent schools in the city. The number of applicants is so high that it’s better to give a shot to over 10 schools,’ said Varun Trikha, seeking admission for his five-year-old daughter at Bal Bharti School in central Delhi’s Pusa Road.
The admission forms will be sold till Jan 15. The schools are likely to declare the final admission list Feb 1.
Some parents complained as different schools have adopted different admission criteria, after seeking permission from the directorate of education.
School authorities dismissed allegations of confusion. ‘We have simple guidelines on points. The chaos is there because parents are also restricted to certain schools because of reasons such as proximity, sibling and choice,’ Anuradha Mathur, principal of Salwan Montessori School in Rajinder Nagar told IANS.
‘Nobody is going for an admission system that will cause problems to the parents,’ said Madhulika Sen, principal of Tagore International School in Vasant Vihar, south Delhi.
Most schools are likely to rely on the lottery system for admitting students from the economically weaker sections (EWS).
