Education News

Delhi Rigid admission prescription In what is widely interpreted as a sharp setback to the thriving business of play schools which rigorously prepare tiny tots for admission into kindergarten and nursery schools, on October 17, the Delhi high court banned admission interviews of toddlers as well as their parents. The court accepted the recommendations of a five member committee (appointed by it four weeks earlier) headed by CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly and directed schools in the capital to implement them on a trial basis for one year. The most striking recommendation of the committee is a common admission calendar for all schools beginning with sale and submission of admission forms from December 1-20. By January 31 the list of selected children will have to be ready followed by payment of fees and completion of admission formalities (February 1-20). The second list, if any, will have to be posted by February 26 so that classes can start from April 1. “This is a major victory for the children of Delhi; at least their trauma will cease now,” says Ashok Aggarwal senior advocate and convener of Social Jurist, an advocacy group that started this long drawn court battle by filing a PIL (public interest litigation) in 2004 petitioning the court for a ban on interviews of pre-school children. The five-member committee, which apart from Ashok Ganguly, included T.V. Kunnunkal, a former CBSE chairman; Dr. Ved Vyas, former principal of Modern School; Dr. Anil Wilson, principal St. Stephen’s College, and Dr. Shyama Chona, principal, Delhi Public School, R K Puram as member convener, has devised a 100 point scale to determine admissions. With all interviews or interaction banned by the court, admission of children into nursery or kindergarten schools will be governed by several criteria. Children residing in the neighbourhood of schools (upto 3 km) get 20 points which correspo-ndingly reduces to 0 for those residing at a distance of 10 km. Similarly, having a sibling in the school will credit 20 points and being the child of an alumnus, girl child, and child with special needs will be given a weightage of five points each. Another criterion will be parental qualification, which for both parents is 20 (10 points each) if they are postgraduates with credits decreasing commensurately. Parents with less than class X education get zero points. Schools have been given 20 points to award according to their requirements which have to be made public through prior advertisement. In case there’s a tie, draw of lots has been recommended as the way out. Predictably this rigid prescription which minimises the autonomy of pre-primary schools — most of which are private sector initiatives — has riled their promoters/ managements. “The high court order amounts to snuffing out the autonomy of schools because they are deprived of all discretion in selecting pupils. Why should this be when the government doesn’t pay a single penny to them?” queries T.R. Gupta, patron of the Action Committee of Unaided Schools and until recently its founder-president. However, notwithstanding…