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Lift veil off admissions mystery, says court

Hindustan Times, 19 December 2007

Wondering why the neighbourhood school turned down your toddler's nursery admission application? This admissions season, you can find out why your neighbour’s child qualified, even if yours didn’t. To bring transparency to the system adopted by the city’s schools, the Delhi High Court on Friday instructed them to publish a break-up of points scored by selected candidates.

A Division Bench of Chief Justice AP Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar directed the Directorate of Education to instruct schools to display more transparency. The Court was responding to a petition filed by advocacy group Centre for Civil Society (CCS). But the order doesn’t mean schools would publish points scored by all applicants.

Parents say many city schools have brought out lists of successful candidates without clarifying on the points. “Three of the five schools we applied to rejected our form although we live within five km of the schools. A break-up of where others scored and we didn’t would have been great,” said Dwarka resident Sushma Jain.

But a number of city schools claim they already publish such a list. “We always give a breakup of all the children so that parents know where they stand. Otherwise it creates a lot of anxiety and speculation,” said Ameeta Wattal, principal, Springdales, Pusa Road.

But there have been discrepancies where parents didn’t qualify despite acquiring high scores in the points system. “This judgment will enhance transparency and accountability among schools,” said Baladevan Rangaraju, Associate Director, CCS. The court has also directed the education department to highlight action taken on individual complaints on its website.

The department should also direct schools to comply with time limits fixed in admissions guidelines.

“Schools have been given the autonomy to decided their admission schedule and inform the DoE about it,” said S.L. Jain, chairperson, National Progressive Schools Conference, an association of prominent schools in the city.

However, according to information given by the Directorate, 21 city schools have violated admission guidelines.