Nursery admissions to begin in Delhi from tomorrow, check eligibility criteria, fee and other details

New Delhi: The process for nursery admissions in schools across the national capital will begin from Thursday and the application window will close on March 4. The Directorate of Education (DoE) last week notified the admission schedule, bringing respite for anxious parents who have been waiting for the notification for over two months.

As per the notified schedule, the first list of selected children will be displayed on March 20, followed by the second list on March 25 and subsequent list for admission, if any, on March 27. 

The entire admission process will conclude on March 31. Usually, nursery admissions in around 1,700 schools in the national capital begin in the last week of November.

Whats are the DoE guidelines

The DoE releases guidelines and schools are asked to furnish required information, following which the application process is rolled out in December. However, there has been no development on it in 2020. The Delhi government officials had in December said that a proposal to scrap nursery admissions is being considered as the schools have been closed for nine months due to COVID-19 and will remain closed till a vaccine is available. A whole year of online learning for small children seems unviable, they had said. But school principals had opposed this idea.

"Since schools are closed in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and physical classroom learning is not going on for entry-level classes at present, schools have been directed that no fee except prescribed registration fee, admission fee, caution fee (if the school already charges) and tuition fee, shall be charged at the time of admission by the schools and thereafter only tuition fee shall be charged from the students till further orders.

"No deviation from the notified schedule shall be permitted. Each school shall display the admission schedule on its notice board and website. Further each school shall ensure that application forms for admission are made available to all applicants till the last date of submission of admission's application form," a senior DoE official said.

How much fee schools can charge? 

Schools can only charge a non-refundable amount of Rs 25 from the parents as admission registration fee and the purchase of prospectus of the school by the parents has been kept optional. Schools were asked to notify their number of seats and admission criteria by February 15.

What is the criteria for admission?

DoE has directed that the number of seats at the entry levels shall not be less than the highest number of seats in the entry-level classes during the last three years 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21. "Schools shall develop and adopt criteria for admission which shall be fair, reasonable, well defined, equitable, non-discriminatory, unambiguous and transparent.

"No school shall adopt the criterion abolished by the department including charging a capitation fee or donations. Pre-schools or Montessori schools run by registered societies or trusts as branches of recognised unaided schools will have to follow a single admission process for their pre-school and main school considering them as one institution," the official said.

A monitoring cell is being constituted in each district under the chairmanship of the Deputy Director (District) concerned, who shall ensure that each private school uploads the criteria and their points on the online module and further ensure that the school shall not adopt those criteria which were abolished by the department and upheld by the Delhi High Court. 

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