January 17, 2008

The truth behind nursery admissions in Delhi!

The story is known to everyone, parents have cried themselves hoarse over the issue, we have had everything from media to public participation over the Nursery Admission fiasco. The problem began when the DOE flouted vague guidelines regarding nursery admissions on 24th November 2007 (Order No. F/DE/15/1031/ACT/2007/7002 later revised in Dec 2007) which led to the rampant rule flouting by schools across Delhi. Since the guidelines were not very clear the schools got a chance to play with the guidelines and started there own modifications (read fiddling around with the rules). A number of them have been exposed here on nurseryadmissionsdelhi.blogspot.com; but it hasn’t been enough to move anybody to take a step in the interest of the tiny tots (who we all know are the future of the nation). The government’s reaction has been limited to the one off comment (Lovely proudly declaring that every student would get admission) where as the media has pitched in with a few articles here and another news story there (no blaming the media since the future of India is not a TRP or readership booster). The actual problem is that no body cares about the real problem; on a poll conducted here (http://nurseryadmissionsdelhi.blogspot.com/) we asked the people “How many schools have you applied for?” we got shocking results:


You might ask what’s the relevance of my talking about this poll here; well for one it goes on to show the level of desperation among parents ( to the Delhi government – you are losing serious votes here). Now the question “who is listening to our plea?” the DOE is silent, the media doesn’t see a TRP cow in nursery admissions, the schools have become like Reliance Power IPO (oversubscribed) and the sad truth is nobody cares.

It’s our sincere plea to the government of Delhi and the media to please take note (a little bit of action would also come in handy).

Now the latest in the series of exposes about the schools and there football with DOE guidelines:

“SHRI RAM SCHOOL FARCE – As seen and reported by a harried parent”

Imagine as if this is your profile:
1) You are an Engineer, IIM Graduate with an excellent academic record
2) Your spouse has a profile similar to yours
3) You have represented India abroad on multiple occasions
3) You have won several National Level debates/contests/awards like “Technical Paper Contest, National Quiz, International Scholarship” etc.
4) You have certain 40 points (as per admissions criterion detailed out on admission form and school website)

Now, I think you would agree with me that you both can easily score at least 15 points in the interaction (some fellow parents like to call it GD, 'Cattle' Fair and so on) that was held at Sri Ram Vatika a few days back.

So in total you have good 55 points in Sri Ram School and the cut-off is 55 points (54 for the waiting list), but you are no where on that list?

What do you think they should do now? Does that selection criterion really make any sense to anyone out there?

We are opening a new poll today to help understand this problem, please give him the score that you think he would have scored looking at his profile (consider that he has good academic, extra-curricular record).

January 14, 2008

Kathuria Public School, Mahipalpur - Pre-School Admissions Open!

Kathuria Public School, Mahipalpur Road, Vasant Kunj New Delhi , Delhi-70

This school has opened seats for pre-school (nursery) classes for 2008-2009 session. As per current information they have approx. 35-40 seats.

Although school has opened admissions very late but no harm for parents as such. HEre is the school report (received at 10:00am on 14/01/2008):

  1. Very ordinary school, gives an impression of govt. school, so parents who are not willing to send their kids to Govt. school might reject it.
  2. Admission on first come-first serve basis
  3. Very nominal fee (Approx. 3-4K admission fee, Rs. 700-900 p/m tution fee) - please check with school for exact fee structure.
  4. Overall very avg. type of school in terms of education, facilities etc.

Here is the contact information:
Ph:26871111, 55336061

All the best!

January 12, 2008

Survey results are shocking...we really need to think about it!

We conducted a survey and we had received almost 32 replies from parents within last 3 days. The results are very shocking and in fact reflect the kind of frustration and confusion every parent is going through. Here are the details:




As you can see, only 4% say that they will try Govt. school, so Mr. Lovely has a reason to smile as he can always come back and say that there are plenty of seats available in Govt. schools but parents are not willing to send their kids/wards to these schools.

Almost 40% parents ready to give bribe (well read ‘donation’) to the school/management in order to get that ‘one’ seat for their kid. Some parents (12%) think that they can plan shifting out of Delhi (to nearby regions) as they can get a seat there.

The most worrying part is that larger section of our community (62%) still doesn’t know what to do…if they don’t get a seat in Delhi.

Take That! The site claiming to be non-commercial blocks and bans this blog!

As most of us all have seen them on TV, it looked like they were advertising their website rather addressing the issues. I thought I should share my view and help them with whatever I can and I posted this comments today evening on their site:

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Thanks Puja for really coming out and showing courage. You guys have really set an example for rest of the people, but I would somewhat agree to the comments by 'r' that says "it was more like site promotion than bringing up real issues", saying openly that you spent 'x' amount and helping other parents and then talking about future plans (next year and so on) of this 'website' was bit discouraging and out of the topic of issue that parents are facing...

Anyways, thanks for great efforts. We are also trying our level best at Nursery Admissions Delhi blog (
http://nurseryadmissionsdelhi.blogspot.com/) to address real issues directly from parents and media and more.

Thanks again, but it could have been better.
Spyder
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....and to my big surprise, the original post was removed from site because many parents had displayed same views on their site regarding today's coverage on NDTV. And to add to that they banned my account and blocked me from entering the site. Any explainations ????

If anyone wants to see this, I can share my login and password and you can check yourself.

One could easily guess that from the today's coverage on NDTV, as they mentioned they had spent so much money on the site, they have plans for next year and so on.....but hardly a word about the Nursery Admissions, Issues Parents are facing........

Shame on such business minded people that are playing with Parents feelings!