0

New Delhi: Henceforth, there will be no interviews of children or their parents for admission into nursery classes in various private schools in Delhi, the Delhi High Court has ruled.

Clamping a ban on holding of interviews for nursery admissions, the court said the private schools in Delhi must find out an alternative process for admission, which will then be followed by other states.

The order came after the private schools failed to come up with an alternative method to conduct the admission process for nursery admissions.

The high court said henceforth the schools can’t conduct any interview of either the students or their parents. They have been asked to come up with an alternative procedure for admissions by July 26.

A Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice S N Aggarwal gave four weeks to the managements of private schools to stop the interviews.

The Bench said school managements had failed to give a suitable reply on the issue though the court had on December 9, 2005 banned such interviews.

The court recalled that even though the Association of Unaided Private Schools had assured in an affidavit that suitable parameters would be evolved to dispense with the practise, no such efforts had been made even four months after the assurance.

The directions of the Bench followed a public interest litigation filed by an NGO Social Jurist through its counsel Ashok Aggarwal highlighting the practise of the private schools to interview both parents and children of tender age at the time of admissions.

The organisation complained that the practise not only caused embarrassment and inconvenience to parents of the tiny tots, but also subjected the children to severe mental trauma.

(With PTI inputs)