Nursery in Delhi govt schools boon for parents
Delhi government introduced primary classes in 150 of its 450 Sarvodaya schools last year. A look at how these schools are faring today
NEWDELHI:Shastri Nagar resident Nitika, 28, had applied to 14 private schools in Ashok Vihar last year in the hope that her threeyear-old daughter, Sumayyah Shoyeb Alam, would qualify for a free nursery seat reserved for the economically weaker sections (EWS) or disadvantaged groups (DG) of society.
A private school education, otherwise, seemed unaffordable as her husband earns a salary of ₹10,000 per month at a garment factory where he works as a tailor. When Sumayyah did not get an EWS seat at any of those schools, Nitika says they considered taking a loan to send her to a private school in the general category. Though Nitika herself studied at a government school, she wanted a “good English” education for her daughter.
Last April, she finally sent Sumayya to Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in Shakti Nagar for nursery but with a heavy heart, she says. However, she was in for a surprise.
“My perception completely changed. My daughter sings rhymes and poems in English. Even ‘Johnny, Johnny! Yes, Papa!’ Now I feel that I should have simply applied to the government schools. All the ‘bhaagadaudi’ feels unnecessary now,” Nitika said.
The Delhi government had introduced nursery classes in 150 of its 450 Sarvodaya schools last year. As Nitika’s daughter completes a year in one such school, she says parents looking for a nursery seat in private schools finally have an alternative.
MORE DELHI GOVT SCHOOLS TO OFFER NURSERY CLASSES
Atishi Marlena, the advisor to Delhi’s education minister Manish Sisodia, explained that as per the division of responsibilities between agencies, primary education falls within the ambit of the municipal corporations of Delhi while the Delhi government is supposed to offer education from Classes 6 to 12.
However, the 450 Sarvodaya Vidyalayas run by the government are allowed to offer primary classes, but with a caveat that they can have only a maximum of two sections each of the primary classes with up to 40 students per class.
The government hopes to increase the number of schools offering nursery to approximately 300 by the next academic session. As the seats are limited, the admissions are done through a lottery system. Last year, parents needed to apply online first.
Saumya Gupta, the Delhi’s director of education, said they would be tentatively taking applications for admissions to the next academic session from March 3 until March 17.
Marlena said this time the application process would be offline to make it easier for parents. “Last year, it was online, and many parents selected the wrong school, and got assigned schools that were too far away. This year it is going to be offline, so that parents know which school they have applied to and where it is located,” she said.
While some schools such as the Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in Moti Nagar, and the one on the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) campus, have around 18 and 10 students respectively in their nursery classes, other schools like the one in Shakti Nagar are functioning at a full capacity of 40 students.
WHAT THEY TEACH
In a corner classroom of the Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in Moti Nagar, Sadhna Singh is telling her class of around 18 students a story about a tiger, elephant and a mouse using puppets. The walls of the classroom are decorated with children’s “art work,” and a neatly arranged pile of soft toys line the back wall of the class. Her students, all aged between three and four years, sit and listen in rapt attention and respond to any questions the teacher may ask with fervour.
“The major concept behind the nursery classes is that they should never feel like they are ‘studying’. They should have fun. We teach through activities, stories and other fun games,” said Shruti Ahuja, the in-charge of primary classes at the school.
This is probably why the responses to ‘what do you like about your school?’ range from playing drums to playing with teddy bears, to reciting poems to listening to stories in the classrooms.
Sunita S Kaushik, the director of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), said that they had formed a multistakeholder committee whose members included teachers form Directorate of Education-run schools to members of the SCERT, representatives from private schools, and also people from an organisation called Ahvaan, to formulate a curriculum for nursery classes that would be “joyful”, “enjoyable” and would encourage some critical thinking and build basic awareness.
“The curriculum we have come up with is conceptualised by practitioners, so it is practical and it is definitely comparable to any average private school. The teaching at some schools may even be comparable to some excellent private schools. For instance, we do not make kids memorise the alphabet in nursery. Instead, we start with sounds and teach them to differentiate between sounds before teaching them the sounds made by different letters using the phonetic method. We look to build their vocabulary through stories and constant interaction,” explained Preeti Prasad, the director of the Ahvaan Trust.
At the Shakti Nagar school, nursery teacher Sunita Maurya uses different containers filled with substances like sand, rocks and coins to teach her kids the difference in sounds and uses colourful foam shapes to “build” animals.
“The major thing that teachers need to understand is that at this age you can’t tie children down to their desk. So I get them to move around the class. Identify the colours on the walls, count their desks, etc.,” said Maurya. Her students are allowed to move around freely in class and lounge out on the rug.
At the Moti Nagar school, the students get to spend two periods a week in a colourful library that is specially designed for primary and pre-primary students. Here they listen to stories that their teachers read out.
INFRASTRUCTURE REMAINS A PROBLEM
At the SKV in the IARI campus, the 10 students who are enrolled in nursery and the 21 students in kindergarten share the same classroom.
“There is some overlap in the curriculum. The major difference is that the KG students also learn to write the alphabet and numbers, while in nursery they learn it orally. So, we manage in a single room,” said Jyoti Kansal, the nursery teacher.
Shailey Kaushik, the in-charge, said the nursery students would soon be getting their own classrooms, toilets and playgrounds as these were currently under construction.
Marlena, the advisor to the education minister, said that they were building new classrooms in schools, which had a shortage of rooms and were renovating and re-decorating rooms that already been assigned for nursery classes.
“We will look at appropriate furniture, and maybe even put a washbasin in all these classrooms, so that kids can wash their hands before meals,” she said.