“Don't let schooling interfere with your education,” said Mark Twain. This surely does not apply to Indians. Looking at the nursery admissions scenario this year, it seems education has everything to do with schooling and schools – especially after the guidelines issued by the Directorate of Education (DoE) of Delhi which leave the process and criteria of admission to be decided by schools independently.

The Ganguly committee recommendation of the point system, being followed for the past three years, had to go when the Right to Education (RTE) law walked in, because the act calls for “elimination of discrimination at all levels” of admission. So, all those parents who had hoped their children would be admitted on the merit of their education and/or occupation have begun to worry. “I often think about my child making it to an IIM but I never thought I would have to bother about his nursery school admission. Until last year I thought that since my wife and I are engineers so it will benefit my child too, but now we have got different guidelines to follow,” says Lokesh Kumar who lives close to the Akshardham temple.

Under RTE, the government has also announced that every school needs to keep aside 25 percent of its seats for children belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS), and the selection in this category has to be done through a lottery system.

For the rest of the seats, open for children from the general category, schools can either adopt the lottery system or continue with the 100-point system. The points will be allotted on the basis of various criteria like having one’s sibling in the same school, being the child of a single parent, being the child of an alumnus of the school and transfer cases.

This too brings anxiety to Jennie Kwatra, who lives in Gautam Nagar, south Delhi, and is the mother of a three year old. She says, “My daughter is my first child, I am not a single parent, my husband and I are not from Delhi. So that leaves me with only one option: of transfer cases. This would give us fewer points. We will have to apply in at least five schools for her to get admission somewhere. Last year I was relieved because the point system then had the criterion of a girl child, but a lot has changed this year.”

Again, there is a lack of clarity, as reports indicate schools can decide various criteria and their break-up.

Parents also fret over whether the minimum age required for nursery admission this year is three plus or four. The government insists that the schools will go by the same age criterion as last year. That way, children aged more than three years as on March 31, 2011 are eligible for nursery (pre-school) admission, while four years will be the minimum age for KG (pre-primary) admission. However, the age limit will become clear only after the high court decides on the issue in a hearing scheduled for January 11.

Given the skewed demand and supply for nursery-level seats in Delhi, parents have to go through a lot of confusion every year. Instead of simplifying the system, the introduction of RTE has only added to their woes. This year’s confusion level is such that the whole admission process has been postponed to January 1 instead of the usual December 15.

So, as Robert Frost rightly said, “Education is hanging around until you've caught on.”