Kaushalya Jhawar’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter is set to start school this winter but mommy is going back to the classroom before her kid gets to kindergarten.

The race for nursery admissions 2010 has begun with anxious parents joining coaching and grooming classes to improve their guardian quotient as schools shift the performance parameter from smart kids to smarter parenting.

“I have enrolled for a crash course in spoken English and personality development so that I am confident when the principal screens me for my daughter’s admission,” said Kaushalya, who hopes three months of training will make her interview-fit.

Sanjukta Sarkar, the mother of a four-year-old girl, has not joined any coaching class but has been brushing up on her general knowledge and practising how to answer a list of frequently-asked questions.

“My husband and I have shortlisted three schools and used our contacts to get a list of questions that we are likely to be asked. I am practising how to answer these questions smartly but am still nervous,” said the Kasba resident.

Most parents — especially mothers — seem to think that their English-speaking skills will make or break their wards’ chances of getting a seat in a reputable school, but principals say that language hardly matters.

“Language is not a criteria at all, at least not for mothers. A mother only needs to have basic education so that she can follow the guidelines of the school,” said Basanti Biswas, the principal of Calcutta Girls’ High School.

But Sushma Ladha of Lake Town isn’t convinced. “It is a question of making the right impression. I know that if I am unable to converse properly in English, it will affect my child’s chances of getting a seat,” she said, explaining why she has been attending classes in spoken English.

The principal of Mahadevi Birla Girls’ Higher Secondary School, Malini Bhagat, said the shift in focus from child to parent was the result of extensive research.

“Experience has taught us that three and four-year-old kids can hardly answer structured questions. So nursery admissions are no more about recognising alphabets, numbers and colours,” she added.

Mahadevi Birla, St James, Calcutta Girls’ High School, Future Foundation, The Heritage School and South Point are some of the institutions that choose first-graders on the basis of how their parents fare in the interview.

The pressure on parents has increased not only because schools are giving more weightage to their interview, but also because demand for seats in good institutions far outweighs supply in Calcutta.

Not every locality in Calcutta has a reputable school, which is why the city is unable to enforce the Delhi-Mumbai system of a child being eligible for admission only in an institution within a 5-km radius of his or her home.

“Almost all the reputable English-medium schools of the city are in south Calcutta. So it would be unfair if we tried to tackle the rush by imposing geographical boundaries,” said Bhagat.

Before the system of screening parents became the rule rather than the exception, nursery admissions would be on a first-come-first-served basis or through computerised random selection.

“Those days are gone. There is now a severe shortage of schools in Calcutta, and the desperation of parents to get their wards admitted to particular schools has added to the pressure,” said Rita Chatterjee, the principal of Apeejay School.

So what happens when parents have to put their children in a school that wasn’t their first or even second choice?

“It’s an ego thing for some. Inferiority complex often strikes if a friend’s child makes it to a top-rung school and their son or daughter misses out for some reason,” said psychologist Tapashi Mitra.