JOIN USDoE's 11-point circular to schools too late, say parents
Experts involved in nursery admissions said the directorate of education had issued a seven-point circular on January 11 over discrepancies in nursery admissions.
But parents feel the circular came too late for schools to act accordingly. Tuesday was the last day for filling and submitting forms.
Calling the circular an “eyewash”, School Admissions Forum founder Rajan Arora said, “We have also sent a letter to DoE director Amit Singla and education minister Kiran Walia to extend the date till January 30, thus giving some time to schools to change their criteria according to the recent circular.”
He said January 12 and 13 was a weekend, and schools were officially notified by January 14 evening.
The circular stated that schools are arbitrarily fixing the upper age limit. “The issue of uniform upper age limit is being deliberated by the government,” said the circular.
The DoE recently scrapped its advisory board’s decision to have an upper age limit this year.
“Children over four years old are not getting admissions anywhere because schools are still sticking to the earlier order of the DoE’s advisory board regarding its earlier cap on the upper age limit of four years. Admissions are being denied even if the child is a day older than four years,” said Arora.
Another problem that parents are facing relates to address proof documentation, which was clarified in the recent DoE circular. It had mentioned that ration card, domicile certificate of child or parent, voter ID card; electricity, MTNL phone or water bill; passport or Aadhar card will be considered as proof of residence.
“A majority of schools asked for passport and voter ID card, due to which parents were in a fix,” said Arora.
Parents also complained that schools are using criteria like representative affirmative action (RAA), under which equal ratio is given to wards of parents from all kinds of profession and strata, including extraordinary work that made the country proud, among others. “Schools should not include unreasonable parameters such as noble cause and RAA in their admission criteria, which is based on financial or educational status of parents. Under the noble cause slot, doctors and engineers are given extra points. RAA is also ambiguous. The criteria should be non-discriminatory and unambiguous,” said the DoE circular.
Arora said although many schools updated the new guidelines for admissions on Tuesday, restricted timing of the admission process and non-clarity in terms of schools accepting the new guidelines have put parents in a spot.
“There are schools where there is no online admission option. Schools close the admission process by 2 pm or 3 pm. Walia gave a comment that the date cannot be extended because of administration problems in schools,” said a parent.
“The schools will start their session by April 1. Why can’t they extend the date when the circular came a few days before closing admissions. Who is at fault?” said the parent.