हम घोडे और गधे एक साथ नही पढाते हैं और स्कूलों के जैसे - Amity Intl, Saket

SHAME ON AMITY INTERNATIONAL, SAKET! SLAP ON THE FACE OF DOE RULES! - say Delhi Parents

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Amity Reality Check Part -1
- reports a parent who had live interaction at Amity Intl Saket

Do not know the lady interacting with parents was she the principal or just a teacher but she commented on a question asked by parents why only their school was interviewing kids, she stated "हम घोडे और गधे एक साथ नही पढाते हैं और स्कूलों के जैसे", this is the langugae they speak with children there?

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Amity Reality Check Part -2
- reports a parent who had live interaction at Amity Intl Saket

Please do not forget one of the SO-CALLED BEST (in books but we really doubt if they are close to what they say) South Delhi schools.

Amity International, Saket - The process is not transparent at all. They called 100 parents everyday (basis unknown) and asked them to fill a 4-5 pages JUNK/CRAP form (which took atleast 1 hour to fill).

We scored ZERO points (as per their criteria mentioned on school noticeboard) and have never expected a call from them. BUT they called up and asked us to come for verification of dcouments.

In the interaction they asked us many irrelevant questions about our family business. It was proper 10 mins interview on the name of interaction. Although it went very well in our case but to tell you the truth that on what basis they have called us for the verification, our house is 15 KM from the school, no sibling, no alumni, no girl child, no govt servant, no physically chalenged, no SC/ST and not the part of management.

One VERY IMPORTANT thing we missed here is the verifier of documents (apparently a clerk) told us they have called 2000 parents for the interaction. IS THIS FAIR? School only have 60 SEATS and they called up 2000 PARENTS.. ON WHAT BASIS?
1. They haven't taken out any shortlist of candidates for VERIFICATION OF DOCUMENTS
2. There is clearly mentioned on their website that the final admission list will be out on 1st feb, but there is no transparency and NO ADMISSION LIST IS THERE ON WEBSITE.
3. Also i came to know (from a very close relative) that his son has taken admission in January month itself in Amity Intl. As after his interaction ... school called them in 3 days and asked them to deposit fees in next 2 days. This is totally RIDICULOUS, they are not bothered about ANY RULE.

They are just wasting everyone's time and following own method of taking bribe (on name of donation) and giving admissions. How they can tell in January month itself if the child is shortlisted for admission and parents are suppose to deposit fees. Their interaction went till 30th Jan 2008. Still there is no clear list.

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Amity Reality Check Part -3
- reports a parent who was in tears when he was talking to me over phone

We have at least 10 parents who have shown interest in filing/reporting a case aginst Amity International, Saket on basis of some analysis they have done. Rule voilations are public but we really don't understand what the hell DOE, Education Minister is waiting for????

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Amity Reality Check Part -4
- reports a parent over e-mail on 6-feb-2008

Amity Saket has got a note signed by parents that ONLY Rs. 500 (Caution money) is refundable out of Rs. 33k (without transport) paid in the event a refund is required.
When the government's rule clearly said not more than 1 month can be deducted. Is DOE listening???

Letter to Apeejay schools and their reposnse on selection criteria

Note: Entire conversation has been added now, last updated on January 28th, 2008

There was some confusion and doubt in parents mind related to selection list of Apeejay schools. As we could not get much details on issues reported by parents so we send a mail to school principals (Saket, Sheikh Sarai and Pitam Pura) and in response to our e-mail (Dated: January 25, 2008) that we had sent on behalf of all parents, we have received response from Mr. Aditya Berlia (head of ASERF - Apeejay Education Research Foundation) clarifying the doubts that were raised by parents through this blog.

Here is the abstract of this e-conversation:

We asked them to give clarification regarding nursery shortlisting which took place on 24th Jan 2008 across Apeejay schools in Delhi. The issues we highlighted included:
1) Since from the lists it was not clear as to what was the basis of shortlisting. So we asked them to help us understand the exact criteria that schools have followed.
2) As we all had observed that there are kids who scored higher points (for example 50, 54, 58 etc.) and they have not made it to the list but kids with less points (for example 40, 45, 50) have been selected. We asked them to give explanation of the same.

In his response (Dated: January 26, 2008) Mr Aditya mentioned that Apeejay Education Research Foundation has designed “representative affirmative action” system for the nursery admission and details can be found at research foundation website http://admissions.apeejay.edu/
Mr Aditya also mentioned that “system is new and some of the factors are hard to explain; we certainly could do a better job in this regard. I am sure however you will appreciate the manner in which we have conducted the admissions this year; we are certainly quite proud of it.”

Giving due respect to Mr. Aditya’s explanation we spent good time understanding the system process from website, and it was clear that the school had prepared 11 lists (by segments) and selected top scoring kids from each of these lists. So it is also clear that every list will have its own cutoff and hence a kid with 50 points (from “engineering segment”) might have failed but a kid with 35 points (from “media segment”) has made it to the selection list.

We don’t see any rule violation here, except that the school has not made the complete list available to public, so we have sent another mail (Dated: January 26th 2008) to Mr. Aditya asking school to publish the complete list so that we can check if this “system” has really been followed.

Updates received on January 28, 2008:
We have received response from Mr. Aditya today and in his response he mentioned that “With regards to publishing the names and numbers we had decided not to do it online to protect the privacy of the parents. Since the marks given be broken up to reveal confidential information about the parents' qualification and work background, as well as allow anyone to find out the status of someone else's admission, we wish to err on the side of caution in this regard. In this day and age when the privacy of individuals both online and offline are been regularly compromised we felt ethically obliged not to reveal this information online.”

He also added that “Next year we plan to implement a more stringent security system with a username / password aspect; along with a more secure server (better programming as pointed out by you is also needed). The lists were put on the notice board of the school for local consumption. Certainly we have learned a lot from the process this year (we received around 6700 applications for 300 seats), and try for more disclosure next year, perhaps putting in a place a system where marks are given immediately at the point of application.”

We thank Mr. Aditya for timely clarification he has provided to all of us. This has certainly helped everyone

Apeejay School, Sheikh Sarai, Panchsheel Park - baby's day out!

Apeejay School, (Sheikh Sarai, Saket and Pitam Pura) has come out with their first list, I am sure by now most of us have got used to "not seeing" their lil' ones on the lists.

Congratulations to all those who have made to this list!! :)

The cut-off (score of the kid who is last on the selection list) is 65 marks. Myself being computer nurd, I keep doing experiments with the stuff I come across on net, and to my surprise, the school site of prone to "hacking" which is really a bad bad thing. This is hard-core programming stuff, has nothing to do with Nursery Admissions as such ;)

I am planning to inform the school tomorrow about this vulnerability so that they can secure the site information. Spyder is not that bad either - I am after schools for voilating norms and after DOE and Mr. Lovely so letting them do . Can't help it!

Just FYI, my kid also "failed" to make it to Apeejay (7 down out of 19, 12 more to go...) currently he is not aware of what we are going thru for his admission to a bigger school. He is busy playing "Need for Speed" on my laptop and can easily drive the car thru rough pathces on road....I am still learning on the roads of life though...

Problems/issues reported by parents and data verified from the school site:
It is confirmed that Apeejay (Saket, Sheikh Sarai and Pitam Pura - all three) has done soemething fishy with the list. There are kids with 40, 45, 50 marks who are on the selection list and there are those with 50, 58, 54 who have not made it to the list.

We are sending e-mail to school, lets see what resposne we get, if you have reported the problem to the school and have any info/response from school (any tele conv, mails etc), please share it with us. If we don't hear back from school within next 24 hours, let's see what can be done here!

Media? Interested? We have real data! You know my e-mail id - right?

Interation 'Nautanki' at Amity International Saket!

There goes another school-parent interaction at one of the best (on paper they might be but after our recent visit I really doubt if they are close to what they say) South Delhi schools. This school that claims to follow the belief “Vidya Dadate Vinayam- we did not see any signs of "Humanity". Here is the up close and personal experience that we (as parents of 4 year old kid) will never forget in our lives.

1) Our first interaction was with two 'fools' (read 'Amity' Document Verification Officers) who did not even know the difference between a graduation degree and post-graduation one. Myself and my wife had to explain them the difference so that they could mark it properly on the verification form. As we were trying to explain it to them, they were busy arguing between themselves all the time at every stage.
Once the verification part was over they asked us to wait for interaction call.
2) They handed over us a good 6 page paper to fill that had descriptive, objective, multiple choice and questions that hardly make any sense in this admission scenario (e.g. Complete details of Paternal Grandparents, Maternal Grandparents, by complete I mean contact no, education, designation, address and what not...). It took us 45 minutes to complete that form and we thought it is worth spending time on it as probably they would refer to this form during interaction.
3) It was over 2 hours since we landed inAmity land but we were nowhere on that interaction list, after repeated reminders they noticed that verification officer had misplaced the form and so they asked us to wait for 'some more' time, so we did as we had no other option at hand.
4) Finally the wait was over and we got the call and then the 'Nautanki' started, as we entered the room two well dressed ladies were waiting inside and it was a rapid fire questions round (very much standard ones as you can guess), and with in 3 (yes! three!) minutes we were shown the door. Thank You! - she said.

I am not calling this interaction as Nautanki, because of the time duration, or type of questions they asked but the 'quality' of the interaction. One of those ladies was busy with her own stuff (flipping thru some files, papers etc) and the one who was firing questions was really not listening to us.

That's the real problem, why were we parents are being humiliated? Why are we made to stand in the queues, wait at schools for these silly interactions? Sucs!

We also asked couple of other parents and the response was the same - 'Nautanki'!

Birla Vidya Niketan, Saket - Nursery Admissions Interaction

Taare Zameen Par - every school is special, so does the Birla Vidya Niketan. If you ignore the Trojan Viruses on their website, everything this school is doing is overall satisfactory.

Recently reported by one of my fellow parents that this school has started Nursery Interactions with parents and here is the abstract of what to expect during these interactions:

Good things about interactions at Birla Vidya Niketan:

• Very well managed by school, they give you date and time slot and adhere to that
  They give you pretty comfortable place to sit and a teacher will come calling your number when the interviewer is available.
• They allow child to accompany you in case of child is too young (although they mention that parents should come alone for interactions)
• They give you a form to fill-up during that wait period (family detail sort of form, 2 pages long) – sorry we can’t disclose the form questions because that would be against the rules and unfair to school norms as well.
• Interactions are 10-20 minutes long
• Complete process (start to end) takes no longer than 15-40 minutes.
• They don’t ask kid to color, paint, draw anything, neither they ask where they are (just in case you are not taking them along to school)

Bad things: Don't understand, why interaction is required?

New Green Field Schools, Saket and Alaknanda - Admissions Open

New Green Field Schools, Saket and Alaknanda branches have opened admissions for Pre-School and Pre-Primary today. Detail are available at school and in today's HT - Delhi Edition.

Unfortunately the school site (be careful!!!) is full of spam scripts and it's being blocked by anti-virus tools. If you dont have a good anti-virus installed on your machine - DO NOT OPEN THIS SITE!!!

Updates from Birla Vidya Niketan, Saket, New Delhi

To my big surprise - the site of this permier south delhi school is very annoying. The worst a website can do is throw ad pop-ups which this site does. Not sure if you have noticed that but the home page title reads "New Page 1", and the images and font ont he home page is also out of proportion. Wondering who designed this website and who approved this design and layout...

Last few days this site has started throwing login boxes (probably replaced existing pop-ups)

Banner moving left to right is aprominant design flow- huh! I can go on and on.....let's go back to admissions.

So far no news, updats are available from this school too as in most of the cases in Delhi. We enquired from school administration and but they said - we dont have any exact information as yet, we are working on it and they told us that information will be published in the leading newspapers of Delhi like Times of India, Hindustan Times etc.

Same story - O God!

क्यों आते नहीं नारद राह दिखाने,
क्यों आता नहीं वो बंसी बजाने!

जलाते हैं मंदिर, जालाते हैं मस्जिद,
क्यों आता नहीं कोई दीपक जलाने,
क्यों आते नहीं नारद राह दिखाने!

अजब है मंजर, हर हाथ में है खंजर,
क्यों आता नहीं कोई मरहम लगाने,
क्यों आते नहीं नारद राह दिखाने!