Nursery School Admissions : Jan 2011

Our child was admitted last year to a nursery school of our choice. Relief, joy, peace! The worries are now about having to get up at six every morning for the next fourteen years, arranging transport, getting a bawling child on a bus full of people. But this is not the time for that story.

I write this as a parent who went through the agony of the admission process – my abiding fear through those three months was of having failed my three-year-old child – for not staying in the right neighborhood, for not having studied in Delhi, for not having a school-going child before this one! In those three months, I, along with thousands of parents like me, asked some basic questions about the way we approach nursery admissions. I write this to raise those questions.

In the bad old days, there was NO system. So you had absolutely no idea what the schools were looking for – educated parents with MNC jobs, or intellectuals, or those with deep pockets to make hefty donations, or precocious three year olds with excellent social skills and the ability to tell a lauki from a tori – in English, of course.

We have all heard stories of how crying children were dragged away for ‘interaction’ and observation, while the parents sat separately (from each other) to write long essays about their views on parenting, their expectations from the school, how they dealt with their child’s tantrums and how they would manage two careers without neglecting the child (as if the school would offer to help!).

Predictably, money stepped in – so you heard confident, knowledgeable claims of “rates” – a seat in this school is going at eight lac rupees, and that one for ten. “Knowing” someone on the management committee was your ticket to salvation.

No wonder then, that there were committees and crusades. What emerged as the solution was a glorious “point” system. Now, interviewing children or their parents would not be allowed. Instead, every school would declare their criteria for selection. All applicants would be awarded points on the basis of those criteria, and those with the highest points would be selected. Transparency, so sorely lacking before, would be enforced.

So, this year, some schools have filled up their entire nursery class with kids who have a sibling going to the same school, or whose parents are alumni. Religion, gender, and mother-tongue – all are factors for getting extra points in some school or another.  One school even gave extra points if the two parents were from different cultures!

Yet, check out any of the parent-support websites for nursery admissions – and you will find that parents were still unhappy. Topping the list of complaints was “I applied to twelve (or fourteen, or eighteen) schools, and my child did not get through any!” The second big complaint was against Mr Lovely, the Education Minister,  who forced schools to change criteria midway last year, dashing the hopes of many. On the other hand, Mr Lovely (may God bless whoever named him thus) said there were enough seats, if only parents did not run after the top few schools.

I write this now, with no vested interest. I write this in the hope that what happened last year, or in the many years before that, will not happen again, and we will find ways to further improve the system.

I have a simple question for Mr Lovely (or anyone else running this system). When you said that there are enough seats, what was the basis on which you made that claim? Do you know how many children are applying this year? You can’t just add up the number of applications to each school because parents apply to multiple schools. To my knowledge, you haven’t run a census identifying the number of 3 year olds in Delhi in 2010 – so really – how did you know?

And if you didn’t know, how did you make that claim?

And my second question is to all the committees, the website-activists, the schools – why should a nursery school choose its students?

I agree that the “point” system is more transparent. But fundamentally, it remains a discriminatory system. If I as a parent want to send my child to a school that is six kilometers away, rather than to one that is only five kilometers away, surely that is a decision I should be allowed to make? If I am an alcoholic and out of job, doesn’t my child deserve a good education? If I did not go to school in Delhi, is that my child’s fault?

Some would argue that this nursery school business is a seller’s market, and it is not possible for the buyers to choose. But so trapped are we in our cycle of hopping from school to school checking the first list, then the second, (yes, some schools that otherwise claim to have GPS enabled buses don’t bother to put their nursery admission results online) – that we forget how much technology can simplify our lives.

We have the best education minister in India in years --- and we have the opportunity to think differently. And I write for him to think about this.

Mr Sibal, how about creating a central website under the DoE? Let all applicants register there (instead of hopping from school to school buying forms). Give a central registration number to each applicant. List every school with nursery seats, give information about the fees, facilities, focus of the school, bus routes as well as the number of seats being offered, and provide a link to the school website for additional information. Allow each applicant to apply to as many schools as they want on this central website itself, clearly listing their order of preference among schools. The applicants will have the opportunity to look at all the factors, and make an informed choice about their preference.

On the due date, run a computerized draw of lots among applicants, and keep allotting seats one by one to each child whose name comes up, on the basis of his or her preference. If the seats in the school that’s the first preference are filled up, allot a seat in the school that’s the second preference. If that’s gone too, the third preference – and so on.  And then move to the next child. And the next. And – all of this can easily be done in a matter of hours, in front of an audience, with safeguards built in, with bells and whistles as much as you want – quotas for minorities, economically weaker sections – write your algorithm the way you want – technology will handle it. But basically – allow parents to choose the school, and not the other way round.

What happens to children whose names come up later in the draw? They probably get seats in schools that were their fifteenth preference. Is that ideal? No. But then, what happens today? And tell me a way that’s fairer. Eventually, the objective should be to ensure that getting the fifteenth preference makes the parents almost as happy as getting their first or second choice – raise the level of the schools that are today middling in the rating charts.

Here is what you gain from this system.

First. We will know exactly how many children are applying. We will know how many seats are available, in what kinds of schools. Instead of living in a fool’s paradise, we will plan actively. Hopefully, this process will increase the pressure to add seats, and it will then become easier to get government permissions and CBSE accreditation to open a school in this city. Businessmen (yes, let’s not be squeamish) will know where to locate schools. Quality and availability of education in the city will hopefully become an election issue.

Second. With one-child-one-seat matching, we will eliminate this entire first-list-second list endless agony. It’s a much shorter, crisper process.

Third. It puts the choice firmly in the hands of the parents. At the nursery level, that is exactly how it should be. A secondary school can choose. A college can choose. A company can choose. But a nursery school’s job is not to choose. Its job is to nurture.

Fourth. The way applications and preferences stack up, we will have the most comprehensive and transparent rating of schools. This will force many schools to improve their quality of education. Able administrators will be able to set clear, measurable targets for their schools in terms of improving their preference score. Such dramatic disparity in the quality of education imparted by schools affiliated to the same board should be a cause of great concern. Why does no one prefer government schools?

Hopefully, this system will put clear numbers in front of those responsible for running the education system that will leave no room for pointless debate.

Fifth. This system allows the government to step in and make short-term corrections as gap-fillers. Before the draw of lots, you clearly know that in a given year, there are 10% more applicants than seats. There can then be a decision that every school will offer 10% more seats than planned, or the government will quickly move pending applications for new schools. You also clearly know which children need to be admitted next year to schools that start at the KG-level – the ones that did not get picked this year, or the ones that got picked way down in the draw of lots.

Let’s start a discussion – this is one solution, there could be others. We are through, but there will be more parents like us dealing with the same chaos this year. With one of the best education ministers India has seen in decades, the time to act is now.