Life Saving Guide- options for 4+ year old in Nursery Admissions in Delhi

As asked by one of my fellow parents today, I thought I should share what I know.

Most schools are not denying forms for Nursery aka Pre-School admission to 4+ year olds reason being the following:

• they don't want to get highlighted just for denial of forms
• even if they SELL forms to 4+ yr old, they dont gurantee that kid will get a seat in pre-school aka nursery
• it doesnt cost them but add good money to their kitty, so no harm in giving form

There are only few (probably one or two) scools that are strict about age and are not allowing 4+ yrs forms for pre-school.

It's all money game......and unfortunately kids along with their por parents are are loosing side of this political game.

Amiown Interview Questions (yes they conducting so called interactions)

No matter what you do, we will do what we want, the way we want... Probably this is the message that schools are trying to convey to DOE.

This is what we came to know from few parents - Amiown called them for so called "interaction with parents" but then they asked child to be taken into a room and one of the parents was allowed to go in. The "interaction" took place in Hinglish (mix of Hindi and English) and they bombarded kid with question on topics like:

• Color identification
• Shape identification
• Animals, Birds identification
• Painting
• Drawing

The parent were asked these questions (sort of, language and type of question may differ):

• How you want to raise your kid
• What is your take on future of your kid
• Where you both work
• What you do

The total duration of this interaction varied from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. As we can guess, what school is trying to do here........

The facts abouts Shemrock, Kalkaji, New Delhi

I never thought that I would be writing about any play school on my, until one of my very close friend reported this to me. It was really hard to believe his words because whatever he described was no way close to what I (and most of the Delhites) know as Shemrock now days.

Here are some top concerns reported against Shemrock, Kalkaji:

• School doesn’t take kids out for any outdoor activities. Kids have never been taken to nearby parks even.
• School usually sends monthly event calendar in the middle of the month and sometimes it reaches to parents after in the 2nd, 3rd week of the month.
• Recently most of the play schools have been giving parents some clues, information on print (like list of schools in Delhi with their contact information) regarding pre-school, pri-primary admissions but this school has not extended any such help to parents.
  Parents those have tried to approach the owner (franchisee owner) of this Shemrock School with their complaints, the principal has started misbehaving with those parents.
• School organized one teacher-parent meet in last one calendar year (2007). When parents requested principal that they want to see class teacher, she refused saying that parents can only meet teachers during teacher-parent meets.
• School has been found locked at 9am and parents/vans along with kids have to wait at school gates until principal comes and opens the lock. As kids enter the school, the maid/sweepers start cleaning the school and kids have to suffer the dust which is a well known health hazard.
• Vans that are operating for pickup and drops of kids doesn’t have any assistant/teacher and kids are on the sole mercy of drivers that drive rash and kids usually have challenge to balance themselves in the vans journey to school. Matter has been reported to principal many times but all in vain.

These issues were reported to me by one of the parents and his one year experience with this school. If someone has any different or may be similar opinion about this school, please do share the same for the benefit of our fellow parents. Thanks!

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!!!