Last year, the High Court-appointed Ashok Ganguly committee formed a 100-points system and admissions criteria to make the admission process smoother. But the Supreme Court, in November 2007, gave schools back their autonomy in selecting pre-school and pre-primary students.

“A strikingly visible difference is a more balanced sex ratio,” said Manika Sharma, principal of Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar. Last year, 90 per cent of the school’s nursery intake was female.

Shri Ram was not the only school to report this imbalance. The Ganguly committee’s stipulation that a girl child be allocated five extra points led to a gender imbalance in nursery classes across Delhi.

Apart from eliminating gender bias in this year’s admission process, principals also reported selecting students from a wider area than just the neighbouring locality. “Living in the neighbourhood is still an advantage but we also gave preference to those areas on our bus routes,” said Vandana Puri, principal of Salwan Public School, Rajendra Nagar. That, she said, “widened the net somewhat”.

By formulating their own criteria, schools were also able to allocate points in categories not available in last year’s system; for instance, points for parents with transferable jobs, and those enrolling their first child.

Most principals Newsline spoke with agreed this year’s system is better. “Schools must have autonomy,” Suman Nath, principal of Tagore International School-East of Kailash, said. But next year, she would like to see parents from even more varied backgrounds represented in her school. “We don’t want to just have parents from business and professional backgrounds,” Shri Ram’s Manika Sharma said. “First-generation learners are equally important.”

The importance of informal interaction was also stressed. “There was a lot more scope for discussion this year,” Sharma said. “Parents told me they felt empowered.” But this also raised parents’ expectations, as many left interactions on a positive note, only to find they didn’t score a seat, Sharma said.

But Puri said this year’s increased autonomy for schools was less liberating than it first appeared. “There was little room for manoeuvre within parameters given to us by the Education Department,” the Salwan Public principal said. “It was tough to divide up the 100 points.”