Kids in a kindergarten at one of the community schools.
DOHA: Several expatriate parents are annoyed over assessment tests allegedly being conducted by some private community schools for young children seeking admission in kindergartens.
The parents claim that such tests have negative psychological effects on children.
“We had been told that no entry test would be held for admission of my three-and-half-year girl. But, when we were sitting in the waiting room, a teacher took my daughter for the test in a separate room. She started crying. Next day we were informed that she could not pass the test,” Manish Kumar, a parent, told The Peninsula, recalling his experience in an Indian school.
Terming the test unjust, Kumar from Al Wukair said, “How can a little kid perform well in a test under psychological pressure. An unknown building, unknown people and a separate room — all these things make children confused and stressed.”
According to Kumar, another Indian community school also conducted an assessment test in written format for his daughter.
“Here too we were told that no written entry test would be conducted but at the eleventh hour they took her along with other candidates for admission to KG1 to a separate room and informed us the same day that my baby had failed.
“She was provided with a paper with entries in two columns — one starting from one and ending at 10 and the second with entries from A to L,” Kumar said, adding courts of law in India had declared KG admission tests illegal and barred private schools from conducting them. He said such tests are also not conducted in other parts of the world.
Contacted, Shahab-ud-Din, Vice-Principal, Shantiniketan Indian School, said the school is not taking any entrance tests for KG students. “We just have an interactive session with the parents, nothing else.”
Pakistani expats also question the test and say it is a useless exercise of evaluating kids who are starting education.
Riaz Bakali, Director, The Next Generation School, aired a different view. “It is not a written test but an evaluation of a kid’s psychological and medical condition.
“Sometimes either parents don’t know or are not ready to accept that their kid has autism. Therefore, this kind of test is meant to check student’s communication skills and mental health condition,” he added.
Bakali said the test was just to check children’s understanding about colours, sounds and words, etc. Asked whether it was compulsory under existing laws covering education and schools, he replied, “The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has issued a policy regarding the age of children. The decision to conduct such tests or not is taken by schools.”
Parents also claim that some brilliant kids without any mental problem or disease also fail in such tests due to first-time exposure to a strange environment and remain unsuccessful in getting admission which is unjustified.
“My child has no physical or psychological problem but he failed due to anxiety. If schools are compelled to pass kids through an assessment process, it must be done in the presence of parents to make them feel comfortable,” said Khalid Khan, a Pakistani expat.
Some international schools also make kids take a test which is never in a written format. They just check children’s hearing and speaking capabilities.
An official of Choueifat school said they used to check kids’ communication abilities and nothing else.
