FRONT PAGE | Tuesday, February 16, 2010 | Email | Print |  | Back
Centre fixes 4+ for nursery admissions
Pioneer News Service | New Delhi
To tell Sheila Govt to implement decision
In a bid to ‘de-stress’ school education and ‘standardise’ the pre-school admission process in the Capital, the Centre plans to impress upon the Sheila Dikshit Government to fix four years as the minimum age for admission to nursery in all schools in the national Capital.
It would also suggest that pre-schools should not be allowed to ‘prepare’ the students for formal schooling (Class 1 and above) and any educational institution imparting formal education should be given a three-year timeframe to ensure its pre-school is “away from its main school”.
“No child should be less than four years, as on March 31 of a year, for being admitted to nursery. For kindergarten (KG) it should be five years and for Class I six years. There should not be any formal education in pre-school,” HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said after his meeting with a cross-section of school principals besides parents of Delhi over the issue.
He said a “consensus” has been evolved over the issue and he will write to Sheila Dikshit seeking its implementation. “I have already spoken to her and I will be writing a formal letter to her. There’s need for a policy on the matter. There should not be any formal education in nursery and KG,” Sibal said.
While he said it was upto the Delhi Government to take a final decision, he made it clear the minimum age fixation plan was only for Delhi schools. “If schools are unhappy, they can go to the court. There is no system across India. This criteria should be an all-India practice,” he maintained, adding the admission problems in Delhi owe to the fact that there are far more children and less schools.
Sibal said admission to Class I at the age of six will be in line with the Right to Education Act provisions which call for compulsory education for all children between 6-14 years for Class I-VIII. It will also be similar to the process followed by Scandinavian countries.
The move, he said, was against the backdrop of a number of requests to him by school principals. “It not only puts pressure on the three-year-olds but also the parents. They undergo severe emotional and mental stress. It’s injustice to them. If a formal school wants a pre-school it should set up separate infrastructure outside the premises of the main school. A pre-school student should be away from the formal school environment,” the Minister said.
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