Chennai shocker, schools close admission 3 years in advance

“Parents seeking admission for LKG may note that as the number of seats are limited, only those who have registered the year of birth will alone be considered.”

This is one of the many top-rated school where registrations are being made even before the child is born. 

Meanwhile, S Nitish, a resident of Mogappair, said, “I used to live in Anna Nagar earlier. I made visits to seven different schools, supposed to be the good ones in the locality, to get an admission for my daughter. In most cases, I was told that I needed to pay a minimum donation of Rs 1.5 lakh and a few other schools also said that they needed recommendation letters. I later came across a renowned school, which had opened a branch in Mogappair and to my surprise the institution did not demand donation. The reason was that it was a new entrant to the locality. So, I managed to get admission for my daughter.” 

“Parents do everything in their power to get their wards admitted in good schools, preferably those that are close to their residences. Most of them look at the alumni of a school or check if wards of their acquaintance or friends are studying there. Not ready to take a chance, I applied in several schools for my daughter. But I was confident of getting a positive response PSBB which had a branch in our area. Though a couple of schools had reverted with admissions, PSBB kept us waiting for almost a month. But we couldn’t take a chance and ended up finalising admission in one of the schools. We got an admit card from the PSBB a month later. Since we had paid the term fee we didn’t want to forego the admission,” said Vinithra Srikrishnan, another parent. 

Meanwhile, a few educationalists say that some parents start looking for schools as early as when a child is born. “People want to send their kids to the best of schools, which means queuing up in front of a school that has limited seats,” says educationalist Maalathi Kr. 

She further adds, “KG admission is one such challenge. Actually, there are enough number of schools. It’s just the growing expectations.”

She also points that most of the schools started following this trend by creating a hype. “First, there is no specific initiation such as when application forms would be issued. Number of seats available are not revealed. Selection or admission criteria is again a question,” she said, adding, that the interview process is one of the biggest issues.” She also said, “Instead of these approaches, admissions should be purely on first-comefirst-served basis, depending upon parent interaction or application picked up in lots.”