Schools to fix points for nursery admissions

Schools now have the freedom to give as many points as they want to each parameter they devise within a 100-point scale for nursery admissions this year, reports Avishek G Dastidar.

Schools now have the freedom to give as many points as they want to each parameter they devise within a 100-point scale for nursery admissions this year. The government announced this on Friday.

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But there are two riders schools must have a minimum three parameters making up 100 points and that the parameters have to be approved by the Directorate of Education. There is no upper limit to the number of parameters a school can issue.

This is a major shift from the government’s earlier stand: each parameter could not be given less than 5 and more than 20 points in a 100-point scale. The government had also issued the “broad parameters” of neighbourhood, siblings, alumni etc. Schools had complained that the guidelines were rigid and made the process identical to last year’s Ganguly committee “experimentation”.

Delhi Education Minister Arvinder Singh said: “If a school in Karol Bagh says it wants to give preference to children applying from Civil Lines, so be it. We will ask them to make that one of the three parameters.”

Minority schools have been allowed to keep one parameter that ensures that children from their respective communities get an edge over others in the point-scale. The high court had recently ruled that minority schools would have to follow the government’s guidelines for admissions.