A six-member delegation of parents along with lawyers met the Director of Education (DoE) on Monday slamming the school associations which have objected to the nursery admission guidelines. In a letter to the lieutenant Governor, the delegation hit out at the National Progressive School Conference (NPSC) saying that their objections to the guidelines were “motivated, unfounded and not in any manner concerned with the child rights or interests.”
“We wrote to the l-G to let him know that the guidelines passed by him are for the good and that the schools have vested interests in opposing them. The NPSC has objected to the scrapping of 20 percent management quota in schools which was a major source of corruption in admission in private schools,” said Khagesh Jha, advocate and part of the delegation.
In the letter, the delegation elaborated the “discriminatory” policies which have been prevalent in the private schools. “NPSC should come out with a data that how they used the discretionary quota in the last three years for the good of deserving cases. In any case, the management quota system is discriminatory, arbitrary, against public interest and opposed to public policy,” said the letter.
Some of the schools also raised objection on not getting absolute autonomy to fix the criteria for admission. “Any criteria, other than the neighbourhood criteria, is discriminatory and is not acceptable as it is not child centric and against the various judicial pronouncements,” said the parents representation.
The response of the parents and the civil rights’ group Social Jurist, who’s been fighting for the change in nursery admission guidelines, came after some school committees strongly condemned and denounced the new admission criteria.