With kindergarten admissions just a few months away, interview training classes for toddlers are a hit with parents
YOGITA RAO
Barely out of her diapers, three-year-old Ria Sharma, a resident of Bombay Central, is packed off to tuition classes twice a week. She is expected to master a whole lot of lessons and activities in preparation for DDay. For Ria, who has been attending classes for the last six months, that is the all-important day of admission interviews for kindergarten.
Although admissions are two months away, ambitious parents leave no stone unturned to ensure their child has the best possible chance. Crash courses in interview training began as early as April to ensure that toddlers learn exactly how to face the first big interview of their lives.
Meenakshi Chirawala, a trainer from South Mumbai, said, Nowadays children are exposed to a lot of activities right from age three. They go for swimming, drawing, dance, arts and crafts classes; the list goes on. And they are intelligent enough to grasp things at their age. In such cases, it becomes difficult for a school to pick the best. There is always a screening process.
She added that screening happens in schools where applications exceed the number of seats by several hundred.
Naman Agarwal, 4, from Bhulabhai Desai Road, is another toddler who attends interview training sessions with three different trainers. His mother Rita said, Sadly, these classes have become integral to the admissions process if one wants to get into a reputed school. I want to enrol my child in a reputed school in South Mumbai, and almost all of them conduct interviews in some way or the other. It is better that my son gets trained before he faces interviews.
There are even instances of parents sending their children to these classes at a very young age (as young as two-and-ahalf years) and they are trained for two consecutive years.
Although interviews are not allowed at the KG level, some schools still continue with the practice.
While some conduct direct interviews with children, others prefer observing children in a room filled with activity games. Some schools prefer to observe children in their interactions with other children.
WHAT THE CHILDREN ARE TAUGHT
Nursery rhymes, picture talk, conversational skills, numbers, identifying before and after, colours, counting, using beads, identifying locations, stories, clothes and seasons, months of the year, birth date, favourite game (outdoor and indoor), recognising vehicles, flowers, and so on.
Crash courses in interview training began in April to ensure that toddlers learn exactly how to face their first big interview
Publication:Mumbai Mirror ; Date:Sep 22, 2007; Section:City; Page Number:10
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