The application forms for nursery admissions to around 1,500 private schools will begin from December 27 with the first list of selected candidates to be announced by schools on February 15 next year.
The directorate of education (DoE) on Tuesday announced the admission schedule for nursery admissions for class of 2018 in unaided recognised private schools in the city.
This year the government is not bringing any changes in the admission criteria and schools get to decide their own criteria and allot points to various criterions such as distance, first child, girl child and alumnus.
“…all private unaided recognised schools shall develop and adopt criteria for admission which shall be fair, reasonable, well defined, equitable, non-discriminatory, unambiguous and transparent,” the DoE said in a circular.
The DoE also said that all schools will have to abide by the government’s order that had abolished 62 criteria considered “unfair, unreasonable and non-transparent”. These include oral tests, interviews, achievement of parents, non-smoking parents, and vegetarian parents.
The last date to submit application forms in schools is January 17 next year. A DoE official said that on February 2, 2018, schools will have to upload a list detailing marks given to each applicant based on the point system adopted by the school.
“On February 15, 2018, schools will display the first list of selected students with points allocated to each student,” the official said.
Schools have to keep 25% of their total seats reserved for the candidates from economically weaker section and admissions for this category are conducted by the department through computerised draw of lots.
The second list of selected candidates will be announced on February 28, 2018 and the subsequent admission lists, if any, will be announced on March 15, 2018.
The admission process will close on March 31, 2018, the DOE circular said.
Schools have been asked by the Delhi government to upload the admission criteria adopted by them on the DoE’s website by December 26. “…the admission process will be kept in abeyance for those private unaided recognised schools that fail to upload the criterion by December 26, 2017,” the circular said.
The government has asked schools to videograph the draw of lots in presence of parents, who should be informed in advance about it. The video recording has to be kept for at least three months.
The government has fixed the upper age limit for admission to entry level classes with the upper age for nursery being less than 4 years as of March 31 of the year in which admission is sought. For KG, the upper age limit is less than 5 years and for Class 1 the upper age limit is less than 6 years. But this will be implemented for 2019-2020 admission cycle to give parents enough time to plan the admissions.