Abu Dhabi: Among Indian parents in Abu Dhabi whose children are school-age, there is only one topic of discussion – school admissions!
Online registrations, recommendations, raffle draws: The hunt has already begun!
The painful process of finding a school admission is on in the seat-crunched emirate where surging demand consistently falls short of supply.
Parents interviewed by XPRESS said many Indian schools are already turning down applications as they have reached way above their capacity.
“The registration process started in October. Most schools are not accepting new applications,” said Susheel Kumar, an Indian parent. Kumar has applied to five schools hoping his son will get lucky in at least one.
“We are like beggars. We cannot choose which school the child should go to. Our only concern is he should get an admission somewhere,” said Kumar.
Anu Kiran, another Indian parent, said they are also considering international curriculums though they prefer to send their child to a CBSE school.
Raffle draw
“My younger son is four years and six months old. We have to put him in school next year. But I don’t know how,” said Kiran.
Her younger son Dhruv did not get an admission in the sibling quota at Bright Riders School where Kiran’s elder child is studying.
The school had conducted a raffle draw last week to allocate KG 1 seats for the siblings of their existing students.
“Only 15 seats were available in the sibling quota. And there were 150 applicants. My son was not among the 15 lucky ones,” said a frustrated Kiran.
The Indian mother said her child had already lost one year because he was 27 days short of the age criteria for KG admissions set by ADEC (Abu Dhabi Education Council).
An official at the Bright Riders School said they do not have seats from KG 1 to Grade 5.
“Our KG 1 batches are already filled by students who are absorbed from Sara Nursery run by the same management. The 15 available seats are offered to siblings through a lottery system,” said the official.
She said even then the school had to turn away about 135 sibling applications out of the 150.
The seat crisis is not any better in many other Indian schools in the capital that start their 2015-16 academic year in April.
More than 50 per cent of the available seats in the newly-opened Al Wathba branch of Abu Dhabi Indian High school have already been given away to siblings. Only the remaining seats are open to the public. The online registration is open till the end of December. According to the information posted on the school’s website, a raffle draw will be conducted on the first week of February to choose the candidates.
“There is a deluge of applications coming in every day,” said a school official without revealing the numbers.
The Al Wathba campus of the Abu Dhabi Indian High School was opened last year as the existing campus in Muroor is bursting at the seams.
The Private International English School in Mussafah said they have already closed the online registration for Kg 1 because of the rush.
“We have only 100 seats in KG 1, and we already have got more applications than we can accommodate,” said a staff responsible for admissions.
Every year, the 30 Indian schools that operate in Abu Dhabi face an astounding demand for seats, that leave many parents running helter-skelter for admissions.
But unfortunately, the growth in supply has consistently fallen short of the overwhelming demand. For instance, last year only one new school – Bright Riders by Indian businessman B.R Shetty, was opened in Abu Dhabi.
This year also, only one new school - Global Indian International School – is expected to ease the demand.
According to ADEC, the enrolment in private schools is growing by seven per cent a year. By 2020, the private schools are expected to take in 283,000 students.
But the lack of investments in the affordable category of schools with annual fees below Dh20,000 does not give much hope for parents who get driven round the bend every year.
