Government of Delhi announced on Wednesday that schools will be allowed to set the criteria for nursery admissions but said they must reserve a quarter of their seats for poor families. Parents, however, feared the freedom will be misused. Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely, while making the announcement mentioned that 25% of the nursery seats have to be reserved for children of those parents, whose annual income is less than `100,000. Schools can randomly select from applicants in this category.
As for the remaining 75%, Lovely mentioned that the schools will be free to formulate their policy for admission but it should include criteria for categorizsation of the applicants. He also described that there should not be profiling of the child based on the parents' educational qualification and income. The parents, however, had doubts over the implementation. According to the guidelines, all the schools – both which are built on government land and others – will have to reserve 25% of their seats for the poor. At present, schools built on government land provide a quota of 15% to the economically weaker sections. Delhi has around 2,000 schools. The admission process will begin on January 1, 2011 and will be completed by March 31, 2011.
