The tussle between schools and law makers

By Madhurie Singh, January 20, 2014

This is an interesting article that all parents, schools and anyone who has any interest in the education or children or India.

http://realitycheck.wordpress.com Iam unable to find any place to take the permission from the site owner, so if you are the site owner, do let me know.

The official new nursery admissions rules 12795_12809_dt_18122013 . Note Sec 14(e) has been amended since to extend the radius for neigbourhood schools from 6Km to 8Km.

Readers of this blog will recall last years analysis of the traumatic nursery admissions season in Delhi ( Delhi nursery admission meets the RTE ). This year, the Lieutenant Gov of Delhi Mr Najeeb Jung has turned the tables on the Private Schools by abolishing all discretion in admission and imposing a rigid points and quota system on them. It is no longer surprising that an issue of this magnitude has zero comment in the media. Lets see if we can fill in the gaps.

Non Minority Private Rules

The formula

To really appreciate the issues you must spend a minute to understand the exact formula proposed. It is also important to critically distinguish between the Points vs Quotas. Here is the formula for unaided non-minority schools.

The entire capacity of the school is divided into four quotas :

25% Right to Education quota – where caste based and income based cross subsidized “free” seats are clubbed together into a single lottery ( per Delhi High Court order which banned sub quotas) Topic for another post.
5% For Girl students
5% For children and grandchildren of Staff
65% For allocation by points system below
The points system to be used for the 5% girls and 70% open quota is as follows

70% for neighbourhood – defined by 8KM aerial distance. We can have another discussion about road distance, but aerial distance is the only parameter that is justifiable.
20% for if sibling is studying in school.
5% if either parent is an alumni (typically must have graduated from the school – so if you studied LKG to 9th but moved in 10th you arent an alumni)
5% for inter-state transfers
The critical issue with the points system is the following.

All applications at a higher point must be cleared before opening applications at a lower point.

Lets consider an oversubscribed school X – all applicants trying to get their 2nd or 3rd kid in have to be cleared at points 90 before the first applications are opened for single child parents. Similarly all 2nd children of alumni must be cleared before the first applications are opened for 2nd children of non-alumni. If at any stage there are more applications than there are number of seats – a lottery will be used to settle the matter. We will see shortly how this absolutely entrenches privilege as people with lower points are squeezed out.

Minority Private Rules

The rules for minority unaided schools are as following :

They need to reserve 20% seats for poor in exchange for having been allotted land in the 60′s and 70′s. This has since been struck down by the Delhi High court in St Columba’s and Catholic schools case. All unaided minority schools are expected to be out unless the original land lease deed stipulated this condition. [Source (IE): “Relief for St Columba’s” ]
They can adopt any rule they want to select and admit their respective minority students. In other words, the Delhi School Education Rules does not apply to them.
If after admitting minority students, these schools decide to admit Hindu students or students of a different minority than that of the institution, they must follow the above Rules towards all seats in this category. This has since been struck down by the Delhi High Court on a petition by Society of Catholic Schools (Arch Diocese of Delhi) and Society of Minority Schools. [Source TOI : Minority schools can define own rules ]
So as it stands – all restrictions are now off minority unaided schools. This have full autonomy in the sense the law does not apply to them at all.

Read the complete article here:
Source
http://realitycheck.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/delhi-nursery-school-admissions-rules-2014-a-misguided-effort/

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