All-night vigil for that elusive LKG seat
Nursery admissions in Bangalore couldn’t get hotter than this. Rushing to grab that Kindergarten seat — mostly allotted on a first-come-first-served basis — anxious that their children would miss out, parents are camping outside schools ready to spend the night in a queue. 
It happened again on Wednesday night in a school in Frazer Town, the parents not ready to let the gravity of this Himalayan ordeal escape them.
By nightfall on Wednesday, the school’s main gates were closed, and the security guard pleaded with parents to return Thursday morning to collect the admission application forms. But the parents weren’t prepared to take chances. They simply walked to the school’s rear gate and joined the serpentine queue which kept getting longer through the night!
The queue had started to form from Wednesday morning. This, despite the St Francis Xavier School announcing that application forms for admissions to LKG would only be issued on Thursday afternoon. But for the parents, it was reason enough to virtually set up a makeshift camp. They were fully prepared for the all-night wait with mats, warm clothes and food.
“It all began with one person who sat in front of the premises by 7 am on Wednesday. Whoever came to pick up their wards from the school informed their friends and by early in the evening, the number of parents who gathered before the school had crossed 100,” said Ahmed, who was in the queue for his niece’s admission.
But the earliest was Ambrose, a senior citizen who was at the venue from early Wednesday morning. He had come for his grand-daughter’s admission. “My grand-daughter is sharp. I want her to get the best education from the basics,” he reasoned. He didn’t mind going without food till he got the application form.
“You have to be smart. Someone else might take your place and the whole day would go a waste,” said Umar Farooq, another parent. To ensure that there was no squabbling or rush in the end, the parents themselves evolved a token system for the day.
Farooq decided to take care of issuing tokens to everyone present. For him, though the wait was a pressure on parents, it was inevitable. “If we enrol them in schools which have high school as well, we won’t have to worry about admission later,” he said.
Farooq said “finding a school that fits a middle class budget with quality teaching is not easy.” His daughter was enrolled in a pre-school at the age of 2, to prepare her for LKG. “Pre-school prepares the kid for the LKG interivew. It will teach children to mingle with other kids and by the time they reach LKG they will be ready to begin studies,” he said.
Primary and Secondary Education Minister V H Kageri said notices have been issued to schools not to conduct admissions in a manner that would irk brand-conscious parents.
The Frazer Town school decided to issue the forms from 1 pm to 4 pm on Thursday and Friday. Yet, the parents panicked. It was a repeat of what happened outside another prestigious school on Museum Road, a trend that finds resonance across town.
