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All schools have to publish admission criteria: Court

Hindustan Times, 19 December 2007

Delhi High Court on Thursday instructed the Directorate of Education to ensure all schools which have opened admission for nursery publish their admission criteria.

The High Court was responding to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by advocacy group Centre for Civil Society (CCS) on behalf of parents.

"It is an interim relief given by the court. The court has also asked the Delhi education department to establish a hotline to take complaints," said Baladevan Rangaraju, Associate Director, CCS. "It has also asked the education department to come back on Friday and tell the court how they plan to deal with the complaints," he added.

Notably, many big schools in the capital including DPS International, both branches of Modern School and Amity International School, Saket and Pushp Vihar have not disclosed the admission criteria to parents yet.

"Amity Saket and DPS International have already announced their list of selected children. But we still do not know what the point system is for these schools and on what basis the candidates were selected," said Dhananjay Singh (name changed), a parent residing in South Delhi.

Singh's child has managed to get admission in Amity, Saket, and DPS International, but has no clue on what worked in his favour.

According to guidelines issued by the education department, the criteria for selection should be "clear, well-defined and unambiguous". The department also has the power to conduct inspections to ensure that schools are not violating admission norms. However, despite repeated attempts Director Education Chandrabhushan Kumar was not available for comment.

Violations continue

Meanwhile, schools continued to charge hefty amounts for prospectus and refused to give receipts.

"One particular school in Rohini charged Rs 500 for the brochure, which had some general articles on parenting, some photographs of models and nothing at all on the admission process/criterion, infrastructure facilities, etc.," said a parent on conditions of anonymity, as he was afraid of spoiling his son's admission chances.