The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : The frantic hunt for a kindergarten seat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 11, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

The frantic hunt for a kindergarten seat

By Dhanya Parthasarathy

CHENNAI, FEB. 10. It is almost a year since the school mailed a rejection slip to Shravan (name changed). And his mother, Savitha, is still sore that her son was not admitted to the `prestigious' school in her locality.

"I still don't know why Shravan didn't make it. We stay five minutes away from the school. We are well-educated parents. We queued up one day in advance to get the application form. Of course, we didn't have any `recommendation'. May be they thought my husband's salary was not enough?" she says. This year, hundreds of parents in the city are fretting about kindergarten admissions. Having researched schools, narrowed down on a few `select' ones, taken off from work and stood in queues for application forms, parents have one question staring at them now — will their little ones make it to a `first-rate' school.

S. Priya is a `lucky' mother of a five-year-old, who got admission for her son easily to a school in Besant Nagar because she was a former student.

She reflects: "I think I put him in school too early. The poor boy has already finished three years of school. He had monthly tests in LKG that were all entered in the report card. Now he is gone for the whole day — from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. And if he gets a grade in a test that says `good,' I am upset. I ask him why he hasn't gotten `excellent.' Yes. The pressure is already there."

Another young mother R. Nitya was flooded with calls when her 2-and-a-half-year-old Yalini sailed into Abacus School a few months ago. "Many anxious parents called to ask me about the school, its history, its future plans and how the interview went off," she recalls.

The creme de la creme schools too are under pressure — thousands of applications for a few seats, influential recommendations and the faces of desperate parents.

Shishya, at Adyar, clearly puts up this note on LKG admissions, "Parents may register the names of their children in advance, as admission is on a first come basis. As the numbers available are small, many parents choose to register their children at birth."

But most schools aggravate the situation by inviting too many application forms for too few seats.

Dr. K. Shanmugavelayutham, convener of the Tamil Nadu Forum for Crèche and Child Care Services, says no demand should be made on a child for a level of achievement to justify a `selection.'

Traumatic

"A selection test would be traumatic to the child. The only thing that a child learns is that he or she has failed," he says. His suggestion is that schools follow a neighbourhood policy and reduce the area to one kilometre or even less to reduce the number of applications. He considers questions such as parents' salary, car brand or what they can do for schools in the application forms as non-essential.

Bina Mathan, headmistress of kindergarten at Sir M. Venkata Subba Rao School, T. Nagar, draws upon her 22 years of experience as a teacher, to tell every young parent that: "You still have 50 per cent of the responsibility in educating your child, no matter which school you put him in. Most working parents sit back and relax if they have managed to put the child in a sought-after school. That is not enough. You need to train your child in basic manners, instil a little discipline and be aware of the time he/she spends in front of the TV."

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