Ending a year of confusion over nursery admissions, the Delhi High Court on Friday quashed lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung’s point system stating that private-unaided schools can set their own criteria for nursery admissions. The court said that the Government’s decision last year was “neither procedurally proper nor rational”.
Justice Manmohan said that the private-unaided schools have the fundamental right to “maximum autonomy in day-to-day administration, including right to admit students”.
Additionally, the court also negated the importance of the neighbourhood quota. It said that the “neighbourhood concept was better taken care of by private-unaided schools both in terms of guidelines laid down in the Ganguly Committee report as well as under the earlier admission order of 2007”.
Meanwhile, sources inform that the Directorate of Education would soon appeal to the court against the decision.
As per the l-G’s point system, maximum weightage was given to students who stayed in the neighbourhood. However, Justice Manmohan in his 69-page judgement said, “Children should have the option to go to a neighbourhood school, but their choice cannot be restricted to a school in their locality. This court is unable to appreciate that a student’s educational fate can be relegated to his position on a map.”
In the l-G’s point system, 70 points were reserved for those living in the neighbourhood in a radius of eight-kms, 20 points for siblings studying in the same school, five points for students whose parents were alumnus of the school and another five points for inter-State transfer quota. When these guidelines had been implemented, some of the major changes that were brought in were that there was a shift from the flexible point system to a common point system, there was no room for management quota and five per cent reservation made for girls in co-education schools.
This order was opposed by one and all and for a year several cases were taken up in the court delaying the admission procedure till May-end. However, now the admissions would be held as per the Ganguly Committee recommendations.
As per the recommendations, the school can develop and adopt criteria for admission which is “clear, well-defined, equitable, non- discriminatory, unambiguous and in the best interests of children”. According to that the schools can set criterion on neighbourhood, background of child, sibling, transfer case, single parent and management quota. However, schools need not include all the criterions in their guidelines.
While this news has come as a huge relief for private schools, the same can’t be said for all parents. With the ball now in the school’s court, parents feel that there may be a rise in back-door entries and unfair admissions. Principals on the other hand are completely elated with the decision and said that they have finally got back their “fundamental right of complete autonomy”. Principal of Springdales School Ameeta Mulla Wattal said, “Everything was going smooth until last year when the l-G’s guidelines came out. There was utter chaos. There needs to be trust instilled in the private schools of Delhi especially when Government schools don’t have nursery.”