Nursery Schools in India

Nursery Schools in India are those schools which specialise in early childhood education and whose divisions of classes’ starts from Nursery to U.K.G. The age of a child is mostly 3 years onwards and it is not necessary that a child would need to clear all levels of classes. Depending upon the intelligence, a child may be promoted straight from Nursery Class to UKG. If a child is extraordinary he/she may just need to spend just a year in Indian nursery school and if a child is little slow it may take him/her a longer duration. Nursery schools in India are almost akin to playschools in India as both tend to kids who have yet to join a formal schooling which begins from Class 1^st onwards. There is a very thin line which separates them and that is the exclusivity of age group and syllabus. In fact many of the preschools are nursery schools and vice versa, this is because some larger firms are capable of accommodating and handling large number of students with proper infrastructure. Similarly many primary schools and senior secondary schools have either nursery schools or play schools attached to them. It is a matter of finance and the target group which the companies are focusing on. Indian nursery schools are often more beneficial for the student as they are affiliated with national or international boards. They also get preference over outside students when getting admission in primary classes.

Nursery schools in India are also known as Kindergarten schools simply because they deal with kindergarten level of classes whose structure is provided below.

Nursery schools when taken in specialised sense have a higher responsibility as compared to the exclusive play schools. There could be a dress code, stricter rules, fixed school hours, more syllabus and activities. Higher standards result in higher admission fees and certain admission conditions which need to be fulfilled before a kid can get admission. In many reputed schools the fees is as high as a university level course. Most of the schools have strange point system based on various factors like proximity to the school, entrance test score, pre existent sibling as student, parents as alumna, widowed mother based on the criteria designed by the school. What is more baffling is that these procedures are not transparent and parents find it hard to fulfil them as timely preparation is required for such. If these conditions are not followed the kid doesn’t stand a chance of admission unless the parents are willing to bribe the authorities concerned.  Most of such schools don’t even provide a receipt for the fees paid. Private nursery schools are supposed to reserve a certain number of seats for the poor kids but they don’t adhere to this rule as often as they should. India has a staggering number of children aged under four, one study points out that India has the largest number of such kids in the world.

The market situation tends to feed on the desperation of parents as they don’t want their children to waste time at home. They want their kids to be better and competitive and it is required from them. Admission in highly reputed schools means a better future for their kids. The children will gain valuable experience which will help them in the highly competitive education scenario and it also reduces the parent’s efforts in self educating the children. However this doesn’t mean that corrupt and unreasonable practices are acceptable. A lot needs to be done before these hurdles can be removed. The government needs to regularize the admission process and fix slabs for admission fee. No school should be allowed to admit students, based upon the high or low admission fee as this favours only the rich kids to be admitted. Strict adherence to Right to Education and centralised admission system wherein parents can apply for multiple schools in one place are some of the remedies for malpractices’ in this type of education system.