HYDERABAD: With a limited number of seats and a different set of rules for each school, the admission season is giving endless worries to parents seeking admission for their wards to kindergarten and pre-primary (classes I and II). With the admission schedule of most schools out and several having conducted their admission tests too, parents have already started making rounds of schools.
While, some schools are giving preference to children having siblings in the same school, others are taking admission only on the basis of management quotas and recommendations.
In others, where seats are easily available, the fee is skyrocketing. Christian missionary schools and Muslim minority schools give priority to Christian and Muslim students thorough quotas.
N Nagamaheshwar Reddy, a techie who recently moved to Hyderabad from Bengaluru, ended up paying `98,000 as donation for a seat in LKG at a school in Bachupally. “Being a single child, my daughter cannot get through these (siblings/teachers/management etc) quotas. So, the only way out was a backdoor entry,” he said. Depending on the category of the school, parents are being charged anything between `10,000 and `1.5 lakh as donation.
Several schools are also making money on application forms and are even charging a registration fee for an appointment with principal and coordinator of schools. While application fee ranges from `500 to `1,000, registration charge ranges between `400 and `500. In addition, even if the number of vacancies is 20, hundreds of forms are being issued.
“The three private schools, which I approached, asked me to register if an appointment with school authorities is to be given. In CBSE schools, I was told that admission depends on what impression parents and the child make on principals,” said Murlidhar, an employee of a private company. He is now trying to use influence to get a seat in a school at Begumpet.