Most people know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. It is pleasant surprise to many of us that Ashok Ganguley Committee set up by the Delhi High Court to set admission criteria in nursery classes has come up with something that at least looks like a horse.
Following the advice of the committee the Delhi High Court has already barred nursery schools from conducting any kind of interviews or interaction with kids or their guardians during the admission process, and has fixed a point system ranging from one to 100 on the basis of which the kids could gain admissions. The court has accepted that priority should be given to kids staying within 3 km radius of the schools for admissions.
Children living within three kilometres of the school will be awarded 20 points and those between 4 and 10 kilometres will be awarded on a sliding scale with a minimum of 8 points being allotted to those who live 10 kilometres away. The school is given 20 points for any particular parameter a school may want to fix. It is here that schools hope to find their wiggle room.
Places in “good” school are a very scarce resource. In many schools the Principals are subject to all types of pressures to give places. Offers of bribes, threats, and bureaucratic and political pressure are commonplace. Pressure comes from every quarter. From the ‘owners’ and board members, from the friends of the management and teachers, from the senior, and sometimes not-so-senior bureaucrats, and from politicians. Some of the schools owned by Industrial houses have quotas for their management staff and on top of this, places are often found for the siblings of their industry partners and top customers.
Many schools will seek to override the 3 km neighbourhood concept and continue business as usual by using their discretionary 20 points. However this will be tough. The parameters the school will want to fix are required to be made public and open to challenge.
Some schools are already contemplating dropping their nursery sections and admitting straight into class one where they can ignore the admission standards that the court has ruled only apply to nursery classes.
For those schools continuing with nursery education the advantage given to girls by the new proposals could be problematic. All things being equal, one of the major effects will be that in future all nursery schools will have far more girls than boys. In the new scheme five points are earmarked for girl children, and so every girl starts of with an unassailable higher ranking than any boy in the same situation. In many schools we could see that girls take all the places in the school except for those given to the boy children of staff and the brothers of existing siblings.
On the 3rd November the court will meet again to hear more suggestions from the committee. We must wait to see how many schools continue with nursery classes and what the reaction of the parents of boy children will be? No doubt they will think that the committee has produced a camel. The parents of the girl child will think it is a horse on which they can ride to a happier horizon.
