Age - An Important Criterion for Nursery Admission

Pre-schools cater to a lower age group and required a different infrastructure and norms for its instruction. It is for this reason that Non-formal schooling had to be demarcated from formal schooling. In such cases a child would start formal schooling at six with the first two years spent in a nursery school. Nurseries and playschools in the capital were now posing to be a problem because they were growing at an alarming rate and, because they followed their own rules.

There were also a number of pre-schools that weren’t even registered. In a survey a number of principals felt that the pre-schools at present were not controlled by any authority and for that reason went unchecked. There were others that considered it to be a business racket that stood a chance of survival. The largest need in this sector of education has been the need for some amount of standardization.

In a TV talk show on play school education, a parent said: "There should be change in the teaching pattern for these children because they compete with the children of age 4 and 5.” A principal from a popular school in South Delhi argued “a child in non-formal education system needs to be free to play — he or she should be kept away from the formal system of education”.

Thousands of parents viewed the move as a relief because they’ve all undergone the trouble of the nursery admission rush when their children are barely two and can barely sit up straight leave alone talk. A large number of parents felt that the existing system of admissions in the capital was traumatic for the child because the children were either scared at the interview seeing new faces or thought the school to be some kind of a clinic where the children would meet a doctor who would give them an injection.

In a nutshell, most of them felt it was not fair for a child of three to go to school. “Increasing the age from three to four years would not solve the problem that parents faced during nursery school admissions” remarked a senior official from the department of Education. Delhi was facing a problem of the paucity of schools which was now reaching the nursery sections. But on the whole, when are parents ever going to understand that if the Government decides to increase the age for formal schooling to six, then the age for university admissions would accordingly also increase by a year. The question is, - Is it reasonable to have young men and women still in school?