The Hindu : New Delhi News : School children may miss the seat they deserve

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Tuesday, Feb 05, 2008
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New Delhi

School children may miss the seat they deserve

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

The mechanism adopted for admission leaves a lot of scope for manoeuvring by the governing bodies

The schools this year have been allowed to just submit their own criteria
‘Several second rung schools are yet to start their admission process’

NEW DELHI: At a time when thousands of parents are trying to get their wards admitted to the best of 1,500-odd public schools in the Capital, it appears that while the criteria set by these schools will play a major role in ensuring a seat, the mechanism adopted for admission has also left some loose strings so that the influential and the resourceful are able to pull at them.

Plenty of flexibility

While the Delhi Government had been insisting that all the schools be made to go by a particular criterion, there is plenty of flexibility at hand.

The schools this year have been allowed to just submit their own criteria with the Government, follow it up and admit children on the basis of informal interaction with the parents.

This has left a lot of scope for manoeuvring by the governing bodies of these schools, which have members drawn from all sections of society including politicians, academics and the judiciary.

The Delhi Government is insisting that by and large all the schools are adhering to the norms. Delhi Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely said all the public schools have submitted their lists of criteria adopted for admissions wherein they give weightage for various factors like minority status, proximity to school and siblings studying in school.

“Profession of parents”

Admitting that some complaints have come in, the Minister said they pertain to only a handful of schools and are of the nature of “profession of parents” being a criterion against the norms.

But with the admission season still on, he has braced up for more: “We have 11 teams headed by a Deputy Director each in all the 11 districts and they are looking into complaints in their areas and also inspecting the schools.”

Mr. Lovely said since Delhi has more schools -- over 5,000 of them -- than any other city in the world, he is confident that “not a single child would go without admission”.

But, he added, the issue is not about admission, but getting admitted into the most prestigious schools, which are considered the ``Top 50”.

In fact, asserting that several second rung schools were yet to start their admission process as they want the parents to make up their mind with respect to the frontline schools, the Minister said: “We are advising people to not go by the names of the schools alone but to look at the proximity and academic performance as well. Many of the prestigious schools do not figure anywhere in the CBSE’s list of the best schools.”

Also, the Minister said, there should be no panic among the parents as though the deadline for completing the bulk of the admissions is March 31, the admission process would continue up to August 31.

However, such sane advice notwithstanding, parents have already using their contacts for securing that elusive seat in the top of the line schools.

With there being no decision yet on how the performance of all the schools would be evaluated and how it would be ensured that they admit the students only on the basis of the stated criteria, the admission mechanism is presently relying on complaints from parents to investigate particular cases.

Meritorious

But with the number of schools being so large, in all likelihood many meritorious student are likely to miss the seat they deserve.

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