Pvt schools break rules, conduct interviews for nursery admission

Two days before the last date of the submission of forms for nursery admission, schools are calling parents and kids for interviews and screening process, as against the DoE guidelines.

A popular school in Dwarka, OPG World School, has called kids and their parents for an “interactive session” and parents are worried that the school will be selecting candidates on this basis.

“I had filled the form for nursery class for my child, after which the school asked for a ten minute interactive session. During it, they asked questions like name, parents’ name, residence, etc. Basically they wanted to see how well can my child speak. This is totally against the Directorate of Education (DoE) directions,” said a parent, on the condition of anonymity.

According to the Delhi School Education Amendment (DSEAA) Bill, passed in Delhi Assembly in December last year, no school can conduct interviews or any kind of screening process at entry level classes, including nursery, and offenders will be levied with a penalty of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.

“My child doesn’t speak much and he didn’t answer many questions. The school authorities said they will call after the interview, but, I haven’t received any calls yet. If they will select kids for nursery on this basis, he won’t get admission,” the parent said, adding, that OPG was the nearest school from his home and he was hoping for admission for his ward there.

Other parents have also complained of a similar exercise in different schools.
Flouting guidelines

“Some schools are doing indirect screening and flouting guidelines by giving points to kids of defence personnel, etc. Ganguly committee was made to protect kids from this kind of screening process. It seems we have gone seven to eight years back at the time before the Ganguly committe was implemented,” said education activist Sumit Vohra, also the founder of admissionsnursery.com, an online portal representing parent community.

Meanwhile, some schools like Neo Convent have not uploaded any criteria for nursery admission on their websites and instead said that admission to any class will be on the basis of a screening test, either written or oral.

Now it is unclear whether this test is for higher classes or for nursery also as there is no other criteria.

With just two days remaining for the parents to apply for nursery classes and even after several warnings by governments to not have discriminatory or arbitrary criteria, schools have not amended them.

A case in point is Adarsh World School which has asked for the mobile handset name and model number in the registration forms for nursery admissions.

“Schools are asking such questions and also parents’ income so that they can choose creamy layer who can fulfill schools demands in future,” Vohra said.
Another school, Bharti Model School is giving full 100 points to ‘First Come First Serve’.

Meanwhile, the government has received around 50,000 forms in the EWS category, whose admission will be done through a centralised system to check malpractices by school managements.