Bhopal: Some 3,000 government primary schools in the state, with less than 15 students, will be shut down. As a first step, a pilot project would be launched in Betul district. The students and teachers of these schools will be shifted to other nearby ones. This re-distribution would help fulfil the norms regarding the number of teachers in primary schools.
Minister of state for school education (independent charge) Deepak Joshi informed Free Press that all the 3,000 schools had been identified.
Lokesh Jatav, director of Rajya Shiksha Kendra (RSK) said under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, norms had been laid down by the government for primary schools vis-a-vis buildings, playgrounds, toilets and number of teachers. The norms said primary school should have a minimum of two teachers and middle school, three.
Presently thousands of primary and middle schools do not meet these norms. If the schools are merged with others, the problem of shortage of teachers would be sorted out to some extent. Under the pilot project, such schools will be shut down and the students will be given the choice of joining any of the schools in a designated cluster. The government will provide transportation facilities to the students. The implementation is expected to begin within a week.
May lead to more students quitting schools
The dropout rate in the state is very high compared with other states. The students prefer to study in the same school from class 1 to 8. If the decision is implemented, the students of class 1 to 5 will be hit.
The enrolment in higher classes is less by an average of one lakh as compared with the lower class in the state every year. It is feared that due to longer travelling distance, following the closure of 3,000 schools, the parents of girls may withdraw their wards from the schools. Not only girls, the boys may also face problems as they may have to depend on public transport to reach their new schools, unlike the present ones which are at a walking distance from their homes.
