A few weeks before she submitted her son’s nursery application last month, 32-year-old Aparna Kuliyal had a conversation with friends that stayed with her.Most of these friends were school teachers like her, and they were talking about the cost of education. Some top schools were mentioned, and their annual fees — Rs 5.5 lakh, 6 lakh, more with the extras.One of Aparna’s friends made a practical point. “If we send our child to a posh school,” she said, “the child will ask for all sorts of things. Which we cannot give.”Aparna is a primary school teacher in a Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) school, and lives in Malviya Nagar with her husband, who is an accountant with a private company, and their three-year-old son Divith. She considers herself comfortable in life — two incomes, a home in South Delhi. Her second child is on the way, due in April.But what the friend said got her thinking. “I don’t want my child to grow up demanding things I can’t provide,” she told The Indian Express. “I want him to be around children from similar backgrounds.”Every winter, anxiety descends upon tens of thousands of households with young children across the city. As the nursery admissions season begins, parents like Aparna find themselves grappling with a range of worries – and difficult questions.The admissions cycle for 2026 began on November 28 last year, when schools were required to upload their admissions criteria on a government portal. Application forms were available on December 4, and submissions closed on December 27. The first list of selected children will be released on January 23.Four families, four choices‘Brand value is important’Story continues below this adAparna and her husband applied to more than 15 schools. It was their first time, and they did their research, scrolling through parents’ groups, school websites, rankings, Instagram pages. Almost 2,000 families compete for 60 ‘general-category’ seats in each school in Delhi on average, and everyone wants their child to have an edge.Aparna wanted Mother’s International — because “everyone says it’s very good academically”. But the junior branch of the school is 8 km from her home, and she worried that might be too far on days when things did not go as expected.She considered Birla Vidya Niketan in part because the school provides meals up to Class 1 in the classroom itself. “That’s very helpful for working mothers,” she said. “Warm food, eating together… that matters.”In the end, she settled for her third choice, Gyan Bharti in Saket, only 1.5 km from home. “Agar kuchh ho jaaye, we can reach quickly. Proximity matters,” she reasoned.Story continues below this adBut still, “if Birla Vidya Niketan grants admission, we are willing to let the current seat go”, she said. Because “these days brand value is as important as proximity.”Aparna also weighed issues such as qualifications of the teachers and student-teacher ratios. “Others may not consider these,” she said. “But I am a teacher myself, and I do.”‘Classmates can’t be too rich’Asha Awana, 31, also a government school teacher, lives in Aya Nagar on the southwestern edge of Delhi, and has two children — Reyansh, who is entering nursery this year, and a younger child. Her daily schedule is very different from that of her husband, who has clients overseas and works at night.“We had to choose between a school in Delhi and one in Gurgaon,” she said. “Gurgaon is closer to Aya Nagar.”Story continues below this adThey applied to a private school close to their home that offered a robotics program and sports facilities and Reyansh, who was called for an interaction in which he was asked about colours, letters, numbers and shapes, has been selected, Asha said.“Earlier, education was only academics-based. Now we think that children should grow in every field,” she said.Asha and her husband had initially wanted another private school for their child. But it was far, and too expensive, especially since they had two kids. Asha was also conscious that an expensive school often meant more than just high tuition fees.“If the environment is very elite, our child may feel inferior,” she said. “We are middle-class folk, or maybe slightly higher. If the other children are too rich, our child may lose confidence.”Story continues below this ad‘Culture of the school matters’Forty-four-year-old Amardeep Singh’s two older children attend Jaspal Kaur Public School. The youngest, Bhavjot, will enter nursery this year.For Amardeep, who drives a cab, the primary concern is cost. There are several options close to where he lives in Shalimar Bagh, but the fees are high. “Nursery fee is Rs 9,000 per month,” he said.For Amardeep’s wife Samneet Kaur (37), it’s important that their children attend a school that values their culture. “We are Sikh. Our prayers are Sikh prayers. Our children must learn Punjabi. That is important,” she said.Little Bhavjot has an advantage in the points-based admission system. The Sikh-run school is at a walking distance from home, and he has two older sisters already attending it.Story continues below this ad“If it is very cold or if the child is sick, I can reach in five minutes,” Samneet said. “My mother-in-law is unwell, so proximity matters to us.”‘Close to home and affordable’The older son of Bharat Gupta, 38, entered nursery at Lancer’s Convent in Rohini in 2020. He has filled around 10 forms for his younger son this year, and remains anxious despite the sibling advantage. “It was competitive then and it’s still competitive now,” he said.Chasing brands isn’t Bharat’s priority. “Being close and affordable is good enough,” he said. “South Delhi has clusters of popular schools. But we also have decent schools here [in northwest Delhi].”Little children, judged by pointsIn 2004, a PIL challenged the opaqueness and arbitrariness of nursery admissions, in which schools would interview toddlers and parents, and playschools ran “coaching classes” for three-year-olds before “interactions”.Story continues below this adIn 2006, the Delhi High Court constituted a committee headed by former CBSE chairperson Ashok Ganguly, which devised the “100-point system” with weights for distance, siblings, alumni, and staff wards. Interviews were stopped and lotteries were started. The idea was to create a more fair system of admissions.Today, distance carries the highest weight — usually between 55 and 70 points — within a radius of 5-8 km of the school. Sibling status adds 10 points, and alumni parents add 20.At Modern Public School, Shalimar Bagh, distance within 8 km earns 70 points; at ITL Public School, Dwarka, it is 60. The rest go to siblings, alumni, and staff wards. Distance dominates at Amity International, Saket, too, followed by siblings, alumni, and staff wards. The rest go into a lottery.Amity has 144 nursery seats. Thirty-six are reserved for students from the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act). Around 40-50 seats go to siblings, alumni, and staff wards.Story continues below this ad“That leaves roughly 60 seats,” said Divya Bhatia, principal of Amity. “There are almost 2,000 applications every year.”Delhi was among the first states to seriously implement the 25% EWS quota mandated by the RTE Act. The AAP government that came to power in 2015 made enforcement stricter.While children from poorer backgrounds now have a pathway to the more elite schools, the number of seats for non-EWS children has reduced. “So competition among middle- and upper-middle-class families has become sharper,” Dr Latika Gupta of the Department of Education at the University of Delhi said.Parents are pushier, more competitive now, several senior principals have noticed. “They are very hands-on,” said Tania Joshi, principal of The Indian School. “They come prepared, having checked websites and rankings. How parents evaluate schools has changed completely.”Bhatia, principal of Amity, said, “Parents make Excel sheets with school name, distance, results, facilities.”While they earlier asked mainly about studies, “now they ask about sports, activities, avenues for growth,” said Joshi.“Parents form WhatsApp groups,” Minakshi Kushwaha of Birla Vidya Niketan said. “There’s aggression everywhere. Everyone thinks someone is cheating them — schools, the government, other parents.”Some parents are simply unreasonable, principals said.“They want five-star facilities but don’t want to pay. Instead of seeing their children’s education as an investment, they see it as an expense,” Alka Kapur of Modern School said.Bhatia recalled an instance when a parent chose Delhi over Noida for their toddler because “Delhi ki seat milegi 12th mein for IIT”.Also Read | Admissions to Nursery, KG and Class 1 in Delhi’s private unaided schools for next academic year commencesChanges needed, the way forward“This (the frenzy over admissions) happens in every big city,” said Latika Gupta, who is constantly approached by parents seeking help and advice. “Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna, Ahmedabad, and Kanpur.”The frenzy is driven by the yearning for ‘status’, and the belief that entering a ‘good’ school in nursery secures the child for the next 15 years, she said.Back in the 1960s, the National Education Commission under D S Kothari (Kothari Commission) had envisioned common schools, but the government schools were never resourced adequately, Gupta said. Liberalisation in the 1990s widened the private-public divide, and while the RTE’s EWS provision helped, it also intensified competition. “Many schools struggled with diversity,” she said.Krishna Kumar, the veteran educationist who has served as a former director of NCERT, said the rot is deep and persistent.“Nothing has changed. Early childhood education is not taken seriously. Nursery teachers are underpaid and undertrained. Even famous nurseries pay teachers a pittance,” Prof Kumar said.Nursery admission stakes are perceived as high simply because good nurseries are scarce, he said. “Anything that is scarce creates a frenzy.”This anxiety is misaligned with the goals of the National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP), which recognised early childhood education as a distinct developmental stage and recommended that formal schooling should begin only at age 6. Under the NEP, the foundational stage — covering ages 3 to 8 — is meant to prioritise play-based, activity-led learning rather than early literacy or academic pressure.The gap between the NEP’s vision and the on-ground reality has increased the dependence of parents on private schools, Gupta said.“Private schools appear attractive because they have somewhat trained nursery teachers and structured early childhood spaces,” she said. But low-fee private schools are often “no better than government schools, where Nursery becomes a miniature Class 1”.What then is the way forward?There is a need to make major investments in government nursery schools, trained teachers, proper spaces, and developmental curricula, Gupta said. Kumar said that India’s education system must take early childhood more seriously in every way.“Teachers do not even have a proper pay scale. Private nurseries hire them for whatever price they can get away with. You can ask any private nursery owner, even very famous, ‘dignified’ nurseries, how much they pay their teachers, and I doubt they will tell you. That’s because most of them pay a pittance. And that is where the problem begins,” he said.The training of nursery teachers, Prof Kumar added, is disconnected from any genuine understanding of child psychology or development.What specific changes made in the short term could help?Principal Kapur said the extra points for girl children should be removed. “In metros, why discriminate? Parents of boys lose points.”Kushwaha said children must stay for longer in school. “With working parents and NEP mandates, longer hours help everyone,” she said.Kapur advised parents that “nursery is the foundation” where “habits form”. At the same time, Joshi said, “Don’t impose dreams. Let children explore.”COST OF EDUCATIONAverage annual tuition fees in private schools (per household)Rs 37,148 in urban Haryana, led by Gurgaon with its cluster of international schoolsRs 20,411 in DelhiRs 19,795 in urban UP, including Noida and GhaziabadSource: Comprehensive Education Survey, MoSPI, 2025, covering 57,742 students across 2,384 villages and 1,982 urban blocks; data collected from 2.21 lakh individuals.GANGULY PANEL TO NEP 2020: HOW NURSERY ADMISSION RULES EVOLVED2006: HC-ordered review, Ganguly Committee formed After PIL challenged inconsistent nursery admission norms in unaided private schools in Delhi, Delhi High Court constituted a committee headed by former CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly to frame uniform criteria, including determining appropriate age and admission guidelines for pre-primary education.2007: Ganguly Committee recommended 100-pt systemIn its Pre-Primary and Pre-School Education Report, the committee recommended the “100-point system” for admission to private schools, weighing criteria such as neighbourhood proximity, siblings, and alumni links. Aim: reduce arbitrary interviews and bring uniformity across schools.2007-08: Legal battle, modifications to Ganguly guidelinesAction Committee, an association of private unaided schools, challenged the Ganguly Committee guidelines in the Supreme Court.Some modification was made to the guidelines and schools were allowed to introduce their own criteria. From 2008 to 2010, Nursery admissions took place as per the Ganguly Committee guidelines.2010-11: Integration with Right to Education; standard timeline25% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) began to be enforced across admission cycles.2012: Debates over questions such as age criteria continuedDebates and arguments continued in courts and schools; cut-off age and duration of nursery/ pre-primary continued to evolve under legal scrutiny.2018: Regulatory stress on transparencyDelhi’s Directorate of Education (DoE) directed 105 schools to halt nursery admissions for failing to publish transparent criteria; demonstrated stricter oversight on admission norms.2019-20: Points system continued to be entrenchedGuided by DoE and court directions, schools continued to rely on the point system, focused on distance, siblings, alumni and other criteria; no testing and interviews.2021: Covid-19 impacts schedule and processesThe nursery admissions cycle was delayed due to the pandemic, with later reporting timelines and compressed schedules. Quotas for both EWS and Children With Special Needs (CWSN) continued to be mandated under DoE instructions.2023: Age criteria standardised by DoE for Nursery/ KG/ Class 1DoE expressed its intention to adopt the restructuring envisioned in the National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP), starting with the Foundational Stage covering ages 3 to 8 years, from the academic session 2024-25.2025: Nursery admissions 2026-27 guidelines were updatedCriteria remained points-based, with transparency requirements such as uploading criteria, applicant data, and point allocations. Key steps: uploading admission criteria by late November; forms opening early December; first list on January 23; closure in March.2026 (Academic Year): Foundational Stage aligned with NEPDoE restructured early education under the NEP, defining a Foundational Stage: Nursery (Balvatika 1): 3+, Lower KG (Balvatika 2): 4+, Upper KG (Balvatika 3): 5+; from 2026–27, Class 1 admission age fixed at 6+.