Parents look at schools closer to home

NEW DELHI: The new admission criteria-especially points distribution-have forced parents to apply to more schools. The fixing of the points system with a large chunk of points going to neighbourhood-70 points to anyone living within eight kilometres-has changed the way parents are going about the application process.

An online survey of over 1,900 parents shows that the percentage of parents applying to over 20 schools has practically doubled since last year, while the percentage applying to 15 or less has dropped by about 15%.

Earlier, with each school selecting its own parameters and points, parents would have to work out their tally for each school.

"Earlier parents used to apply even to far-off schools," says Sumit Vohra of admissionsnursery.com which conducted the survey. He believes that these parents, applying to schools at large distances from home, formed a bulk of the 75% parents who'd applied to zero to 15 schools last year. This year, the percentage for the same number of schools is a little over 60%. Parents are applying to schools within eight kilometers and finding these are fewer in number.

The uneven distribution of schools across the city has meant that the percentage of parents applying to over 20 schools has risen to 15.2% from 7.8% last year. Vohra figures this has to do with some areas-mainly south Delhi-having a very high concentration of schools.