Over 1300 schools fail to notify nursery admission criteria

Over 1300 private schools in the national capital have missed the deadline in notifying the criteria fixed for nursery admissions beginning on January 1 for the upcoming academic session.
The Directorate of Education (DoE) had asked all the unaided recognised schools to "develop and adopt criteria for admission which shall be clear, well defined, equitable, non-discriminatory, unambiguous and transparent".
The schools were asked to upload their criteria adopted (including points for each criterion) for admission to entry level classes (other than EWS/DG category seats) for the academic session 2016-17 on the directorate's website latest by December 20.
However, so far only 359 schools have complied with the directive.

According to data available with DoE, 1376 out of total 1735 schools are yet to notify their criteria.
"We will send a communication to the defaulter schools to comply with the directive within next three days," DoE Director Padmini Singhla told PTI.

"This shows the non-seriousness of the schools towards the directives of the authority. The admissions are going to begin in next two weeks and the schools are yet to notify their criteria. This will only lead to ambiguity and confusion for parents at the last moment," said Sumit Vohra, an activist who also runs a portal on nursery admissions.

The controversy-prone nursery admission process in Delhi, which normally starts in December, has undergone several changes in the past as the authorities looked for ways to make things easier.
Besides state-run schools, the rules are meant to regulate admissions to entry-level classes in private recognised institutions as well.
While the last date for submitting the application is January 22, the first list will be displayed on February 15 followed by another list on February 29.
According to guidelines issued by 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.

DoE has also asked private, unaided recognised schools to not process the admission of Economically Weaker Section/Disadvantaged Group category students manually as the department is in the process of developing a module for online admission under the category.
Last week, the government had 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-I.
The upper age limit for admission in entry level classes for differently abled children have been decided as five years, six years and seven years respectively.