BY SACHIN KUMAR
DOHA: Despite opening of two new Indian schools last year, Asian expatriates are still staring at crisis for admission of their children. Most Indian schools have stopped admission for new academic year, which has shocked parents. The new academic session of Indian schools begins from April and earlier they were accepting new admission till the end of March and even beyond.
Birla Public School, MES Indian School, DPS Modern Indian School, Shantiniketan Indian School, Bhavan’s Public School, Pearl School and Noble International School have stopped the registration process for admissions for 2015-16 session, The Peninsula has learnt.
Now parents are keeping their fingers crossed and are expecting some relaxations from the Supreme Education Council (SEC) for schools, so that their children can get admission this year.
“We are not accepting new admission applications for the next academic session. There are no seats available in any of the classes for 2015-16 session,” A K Shrivastava, Principal, Birla Public School told The Peninsula. “The demand for new admission is so huge that we have stopped counting the number of applications,” he said
Last year, Olive International School and Rajagiri Public School had started operations, providing some relief to parents.
“We have 48 seats for Kindergarten (KG)-1 while we received about 600 applications for admissions so far. The demand is higher for KG classes compared to higher classes,” A J George, Principal, Olive International School told this newspaper. “We are building new blocks that will house new classes for KG-1 and KG-2 because we had anticipated this huge demand for new admissions. The new block will be ready before April,” he said.
“The school admissions are closed for Grades KG to 6 and admission is open only for Grade 7 and 8,” a senior official of Noble International School told this newspaper.
The crisis of admission for Asian expatriates began last year when the SEC in its new regulation limited the number of students in a class. The new regulation put pressure on the existing schools which were having more than stipulated students in a class.
The SEC has also put a cap on number of students one school can admit. Some schools now have more students than the cap. The limit is based on many criteria such as area and other facilities in schools.
Schools have planned expansion to meet the demand for new admissions. Birla Public School is planning to build new classes but it will take about two years to become fully functional. Olive International School is looking a bigger plot of land so that it can expand its classes up to Fifth standard. The Peninsula
