Nothing called a general category for Nursery admission in Delhi Schools

Nursery admission seems to have little room for children belonging to the general category.

Parents woke up to this rude reality on Tuesday as several schools declared their first list of candidates for admission to nursery classes. Results announced by some of the ‘ sought- after’ institutions give the impression that admission is a prerogative of only those who have a sibling in the school or are children of an alumnus.

For instance, all the 77 candidates selected at Delhi Public School- Vasant Vihar branch have scored points either under the sibling or alumni category. Similarly, DPS - East of Kailash has shortlisted 56 candidates and only two of them haven’t qualified under either category.

All children selected under the general category at Mothers’ International School, too, are either of sibling or alumni criterion. Pankaj Gupta, a resident of RK Puram, was confident of his son getting through in Ramjas School in his neighbourhood. But just living in the vicinity of a school, he realised, was not enough.

“ I was scoring 25 points under the neighbourhood category. When I went to check the list, I was shocked to see that all the children who had secured the general seats have done so either under alumni or sibling criteria,” said Gupta. “ Is there no room for people like us?” The number of general seats has shrunk this year because of the 25 per cent reservation for children from economically weaker sections.

To make thing worse, city schools started setting aside a sizeable chunk of seats or giving maximum points for the alumni and sibling categories. The results on Tuesday just corroborated that.

“ The education minister (Arvinder Singh Lovely) announced in December that those who do not qualify under any of the criteria set by the school will also have seats set aside for them. That would have solved our problems,” said a parent who didn’t want to be identified.

It’s not clear if the minister’s announcement wasn’t communicated to the schools or the schools didn’t pay any heed to it.

“ I know a lot of parents who could not secure admission despite applying in 15 schools. They have to keep their children at home,” said Sumit Vohra, founder of an online forum on nursery admission.