After a year-long game of hop, skip and jump, nursery admissions will now again be held in the same manner as they were year before last. With the 2007 Ganguly Committee recommendations being the regulatory guidelines for the admissions processes, private schools can now come up with their own criterion to admit students in nursery. As per the committee’s recommendations, schools can set criterion for neighbourhood, background of child, sibling, transfer case, single parent and management quota based on their school’s requirements.
As per the committee recommendations, the schools can decide on exactly how many points they want to give which criteria. The report has explained the meaning of each criterion, which lays down the ground rules. The neighbourhood criteria as per the Ganguly Committee recommendations states, “It is in the interest of children that they are provided admission in a school nearest to their residence. The schools shall, therefore, give preference to children living in nearby areas. If the school is satisfied that a good and safe transport is available for a child, then, it may consider giving admission to such a child even if he/she lives at a place quite far off from the school. This is also important as distribution of schools is not uniform in the city.”
The recommendations also ask the schools to look at the background of the child and make a conscious effort to admit children with special needs or from vulnerable backgrounds. Parents who have transferable jobs are to be placed under transfer cases and a criterion for single parents is also mentioned. For management quota the report said, “School may have a management quota, which shall not exceed 20 per cent of the total seats available for admission in the class. Schools can also fix additional parameters but are required to stipulate a point system for each criteria/parameter.”