The Delhi government on Wednesday gave the city private schools a free hand in deciding the criteria for nursery admissions and even agreed to their demand of compensation for reserving 25 per cent seats for the economically weaker section (EWS) students. The admission process would begin from January 1, 2011, and will have to be completed by March 31 next.
The schools were adamant on having the point-system devised by the A.K. Ganguly Committee, while the government wanted them to switch to lottery system. They were also pushing strongly against bearing the cost of providing education to EWS students under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. The final guidelines have, however, been agreed upon after several meetings and vociferous protests from schools.
Announcing the guidelines for nursery admissions for the coming session, Delhi education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely said: “The schools are free to frame their own criteria for different categories in conformity with the guidelines but they will have to inform the directorate of education with the details of such criteria and publicise the same.”
Further, 25 per cent of the total seats will have to be reserved for EWS students as per the RTE Act.
“The government will give full compensation for EWS students to the schools which are not built on DDA land, others will get 10 per cent compensation,” the minister said, adding that educational qualification and income of parents would not be used as basis for admissions. He added that the decision to allow schools to frame the guidelines was taken after the Union HRD ministry suggested the same.
However, the government decision was severely criticised by activists who said that the private schools have come out winners, and the government would pay for services provided in the name of the RTE Act.
“The schools will manipulate the admission policy even more this time and they will also get money from the government for the EWS students which they should be doing for the society as part of corporate social responsibility,” said nurseryadmission.com founder and activist Rajan Arora.
“The Delhi government has given a laudatory order. This way we will be able to retain our ethos. We will have heterogeneous group of students. However, we need to be transparent and accountable while forming guidelines,” said Springdales, Pusa Road, principal Ameeta Wattal.
Meanwhile, in an order related to admission of EWS students, the Central Information Commission has directed the Delhi government to ask all the schools to display information about the availability of seats and the total number of available seats prominently when the admissions start.