Last Updated: 00:31 IST(14/12/2010)
The Delhi government has indicated that it will take the middle path between the points and the lottery systems for nursery admissions starting next year. The government has decided that along with the ‘lottery’ system, it will retain some weightage to points — like neighbourhood, siblings and alumni. This means that if you have gone to the school close to your home and so has your elder child, the younger one’s chances of getting in are higher.
While final guidelines and the notification in this regard is likely to be announced on Wednesday, Delhi education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely said the government has finally worked out the criteria the schools will have to follow in nursery admission process starting January 1.
“We don’t want to flout the Right To Education (RTE) Act. At the same time, we don’t want to do anything that inconveniences the parents. We are trying to find the middle path,” Singh said.
The RTE Act recommends ‘random’ selection process for nursery admissions in schools.
According to the 100-point system recommended by the Ganguly Committee, schools of the Capital gave points to girl child, first child, children of alumni, children of professionals and children living in the neighbourhood, thus increasing their chances of admission in a particular school.
While random selection process also does away the reservation of seats for school management, sources said the government might agree to give a small percentage of seats to schools as discretionary quota.
The recommendations were made in the year 2007 and ran successfully in the past three years. Random selection process — which broadly means lottery system giving equal chances to all applicants for admission in any school — has come under severe criticism from both the schools and the parents. They argue it is based on luck and makes it virtually impossible to send all their children to the same school.
Singh said his department had sought and obtained an interpretation of the word random" from the law department, adding that the law department's view of the "random selection process" had been verbally agreed to by the ministry of Human Resource Development.
In a meeting with the schools last week, chief minister Sheila Dikshit had also expressed displeasure with the lottery system saying that it was unfair to parents and students. "It is not written anywhere in the Right to Education that we should have lottery, it just mentions random selection," Singh said.
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