Nursery, KG and Class 1 admissions in Delhi to start on November 28

New Delhi
The admissions process to nursery, pre-primary and Class 1 in private unaided schools for the 2025-26 academic year will commence on November 28, after schools upload their points system-based criteria by November 25, officials with the directorate of education (DoE) said on Tuesday.
Officials set a deadline of December 20 for application submission. Following that, the first list of candidates will be released on January 17, the second list on February 3, and the process will be concluded by March 14.
If there is a tie between two candidates for a single seat, schools will conduct a lottery. “The draw of lots (if any, either computerised or through slips), shall be conducted in a transparent manner in presence of parents. It will be conducted under videography and its footage to be maintained or retained by the school,” the DoE said in its notification.
Officials said 75% of the seats allocated for the general category will be allotted through direct admissions based on the points system, which will be based on criteria such as distance between the student’s home and school, whether the candidate has a sibling in the same school or if a family member is an alumnus. The criteria for assigning points will, however, vary from school to school and will be uploaded on the individual school’s website by November 25.
Candidates will be able to apply through the school’s website, as well as offline, from November 28.
Jyoti Arora, principal of Mount Abu School in Rohini, said, “There are 62 approved criteria from which each school can choose as many as they want and assign points to. For our school, distance of the candidate’s residence from the school is a major criteria, followed by alumni in the family or siblings in the same school.”
The Indian School, too, assigns about 60 points to distance from the school as a part of the criteria, according to its principal Tania Joshi. “Being in the neighbourhood of the school is a major criterion for most schools,” Joshi said.
Reservations, criteria
A fourth of the total number of seats in each school is reserved for multiple categories, such as economically weaker section (EWS), child with disability and disadvantaged group (DG). The admissions for such categories, according to the DoE notice, will be done through a computerised draw of lots. The schedule for the same is yet to be announced.
The DoE set an upper age limit of four years, as of March 31, for admissions to the nursery, five years for kindergarten and six years for Class 1.
The department also warned schools against including criteria such as parents’ education, whether both parents are working, food habits, similar cultural ethos, oral tests or interviews, among others that were scrapped by the Delhi government in 2016.
“We are relieved that the schedule has come early, since going through the entire process and getting admission to a school of choice is really taxing. We have already made a list of schools that we want to apply to for our son to start nursery,” said Shweta, who goes by her first name, a Saket resident.