India ’s School Shortage Means Glut of Parental Stress

[Harold Schiffman]

India's School Shortage Means Glut of Parental Stress Tomas Munita for The
New York Times

Children occupy coveted seats at the private Tagore Preparatory School in
New Delhi. Except for the very poor, government schools are not considered
an option.
  [*Moderator's note: Government schools are "not considered an option"
because they are not in English-medium, which is the case for the private
schools mentioned in this article!  (HS)]*
By SOMINI SENGUPTA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupta/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published: February 6, 2008

NEW DELHI — They offer prayers. They set aside bribe money. Their nights are
restless.

. This is the winter of disquiet for parents of small children in
India<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>,
especially here in its prospering, fast-growing capital, where the demands
of ambition and demography collide with a shortage of desirable schools.
This year, admissions for prekindergarten seats in Delhi begin for children
as young as 3, and what school they get into now is widely felt to make or
break their educational fate. And so it was that a businessman, having
applied to 15 private schools for his 4-year-old son, rushed to the gates of
a prestigious South Delhi academy one morning last week to see if his
child's name had been shortlisted for admissions.

Alas, it had not, and walking back to his car, the fretful father wondered
if it would not be better for Indian couples to have a child only after
being assured a seat in school. "You have a kid and you don't have a school
to send your kid to!" he cried. "It's crazy. You can't sleep at night."

In a measure of his anxiety, the father, 36, who runs his own company,
refused to divulge his full name for fear of jeopardizing his son's chances
of getting into a good school. He reluctantly agreed to be identified by his
first name, Amit.

The anxiety over school admissions is a parable of desire and frustration in
a country with the largest concentration of young people in the world. About
40 percent of India's 1.1 billion citizens are younger than 18; many others
are parents in their 20s and 30s, with young school-age children.

Today, for all but the very poor, government schools are not an option
because they are considered weak, and the competition for choice private
schools is fierce.

The scramble is part of the great Indian education rush, playing out across
the country and across the socioeconomic spectrum. The striving classes are
spending hefty amounts or taking loans to send their children to private
schools. In some cases, children from small towns are commuting more than 40
miles every day to good, or at least sought-after, schools. New private
schools are sprouting, as industrialists, real estate developers and even a
handful of foreign companies eye the Indian education market.

That market is a lot like other things in India. Supply lags far behind
demand as cities grow, pocketbooks swell and parents who themselves may have
struggled in their childhoods want something better for their offspring.

The father named Amit acknowledged the cravings of his social class this
way: "Branding has really taken over. Everyone is looking at what car you're
driving, what clothes you're wearing, where your child is going to school."

A retired civil servant, Vir Singh, 68, recognized this shift in his own
family. One of his sons attended government school and moved to the United
States to work as an engineer. Another attended a decent private school here
in Delhi and went on to work for a multinational company, but today refuses
to send his daughter to his own alma mater. Mr. Singh said that son wanted
his child to attend none but the city's best. "Now they want more high-fly
schools," is how he put it. "It's a changed society."

One morning, in search of a "high fly" school, Mr. Singh arrived at a branch
of the coveted Delhi Public School here — as in Britain, "public" means
private — to see if his granddaughter's name had appeared on the admissions
shortlist. No such luck. Mr. Singh grumbled about the school's criteria for
shortlisting; he was appalled that the child of a single parent was getting
preference. "You want the parents to split up?" he asked incredulously.

The admissions process has never been easy in elite Indian schools. Once,
private school admissions were based on an opaque mix of connections, money
and preferences for certain kinds of families for certain kinds of schools.
Today, as a result of litigation, court-mandated rules in Delhi have been
devised to make the process fairer and more transparent, at least on paper.

Schools are allowed to set their own admissions criteria, but those must be
made clear to parents and followed consistently. Many schools this year have
created a point system that rewards girls, students with older siblings in
the same school, children of alumni and, to encourage neighborhood
schooling, those who live nearby.

Over the past few weeks, it was hard to find parents who were not
complaining about the new rules.

Sridhar and Noopur Kannan, seeking admission to the Delhi Public School for
their 4-year-old son, found it absurd that girls were being rewarded, even
as they counted their one enviable blessing: Mr. Kannan was an alumnus of
the school, and a member of the screening committee remembered him as a good
student.

Rumana Akhtar's alma mater, where her daughter would have had an edge, was
impractical because it was far across town from where she lives. Alok
Aggarwal's efforts to ply his connections had done nothing to secure a seat
for his 4-year-old son. Ashok Gupta rued his own lack of connections, but
had set aside more than $2,500 in case a "donation" would open doors.

Many parents said that despite the new criteria, some schools continued to
make exceptions in exchange for contributions to school funds.

The pressures can be felt on the other side of the door as well.

This year, Suman Nath, principal of Tagore International School, in a
crowded middle-class neighborhood, received 2,014 applications for 112
prekindergarten seats. The other day, she said, a tailor who stitches
clothes for her family came to appeal on behalf of her child. Government
ministers called to lobby on behalf of certain children. A director at
another school recalled receiving a phone call from the electricity board,
threatening to cut off her school's power if a certain child was not
admitted.

The one change that many parents and school administrators have welcomed is
that children are no longer subjected to interviews for admissions. At least
now, Mrs. Nath said, "children aren't experiencing rejection."

That brought little comfort last Friday afternoon, when Tagore International
posted its list of children selected for admission. Parents elbowed their
way through a thick crowd to have a look at the list. Most came away looking
bereft.

"They need to open a new school for children who haven't gotten in
anywhere," said Sarika Chetwani, 28, who had applied unsuccessfully to 12
schools for her 4-year-old daughter. "I'm totally messed up. I don't know
what to do next."

Shailaja Sharma, 26, said her only hope was to find an influential someone
to ply another influential someone with money. Mandira Dev Sengupta,
carrying her 3-year-old-son son, Rio, in her arms, bit her lip and fought
back tears. After 17 applications, Rio had been admitted to only one school,
and it was not one that she particularly liked.

This week, even before the nursery school race was over, another race had
begun. Twelfth graders across India braced for final examinations, which
determine whether students will get coveted university seats, and where.

On Monday, The Hindustan Times published tips for parents of exam takers.
"Do not nag your child," was one. "Remember, he is not a machine that can
study for four to five hours at a stretch," was another.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/world/asia/06school.html?ref=world&pagewanted=all
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