Parents foxed over nursery admissions

There were problems galore for parents on the first day of the nursery admissions.

From schools being unresponsive to technical glitches, it was an exercise marred with hassles for parents who had a harrowing time applying to various schools.
Harjap Singh couldn’t fill a single online form for his child on Friday as he encountered many technical hiccups.

“I wanted to fill the form of DPS, Mathura Road as I am an alumnus from there. But, there were many loopholes like not enough space to fill details asked. Similarly, St Michaels has asked for attested documents, but, it is not specified whether they need self-attestation (which has been allowed by the Centre) or attested by a gazetted officer,” he said. Singh said he couldn’t fill even a single form as there was no clarity and forms once submitted with wrong or incomplete information cannot be filled again. He called up the schools a couple of times during the day, but, in vain.

Risha Chautala, whose three-year-old daughter with a minor disability, has been calling the Bal Bharti and St Thomas School since 11 am to confirm whether her child’s disability could get her admission in the three per cent quota available for those with “special need”. Till 6 pm, her doubts were unanswered. 

“No one picked up the call at any of the schools. It is a harrowing task,” she said.
With most of the schools coming up with compulsory online forms, some parents complained that they are not tech savvy and that is why it took a lot of time to submit the forms. “My target was to complete at least five-six schools today, but, could only submit two forms,” said Megha Agarwal.

Kapil Verma says as the payment portal of Amity School was down, his registration failed twice but the money got deducted. Another parent said that the forms for DPS R K Puram were not available online even though the website mentions so.
Meanwhile, the website of Queens Mary School in Model Town was hacked and the page displayed “hacked by Hex Injector” and “Pakistan Zindabad”.

While on one hand parents complained of compulsory online procedure by some schools, others complain that some most sought-after schools have no such procedure and they have to go personally to collect them. Schools like G D Goenka and Presidium did not come up with online forms, they said.

“They are doing this for making money as we will be forced to buy a Rs 200 prospectus along with the form,” said Chautala.

The admission pricess started on Friday and the last date for submitting the forms will be January 22 and the first list will be out on February 15 followed by another list on February 29. According to guidelines issued by the DoE, all schools shall comply with the directive that the number of seats at entry-level shall not be less than the highest number of seats in the entry class during the years 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-2016.

From this year onwards, the government has also fixed an upper age limit for admission to entry level classes with the maximum age for nursery admissions being set at four years and five and six years for pre-primary and class 1.