The BMC’s mission of enrolling one lakh students in the civic body’s 1,150 schools, having classes from nursery up to tenth grade, has been successful as this academic year saw 1,02,500 admissions. Of these, the highest 32,000 pupils enrolled in the English medium, while the lowest 17,500 opted for the Marathi schools.
In the past few years, the civic-run schools saw a dip in admissions due to which many Marathi medium schools were shut down. So, the BMC introduced many schemes and ideas to increase the number of students and improve the education standards in these schools. Accordingly, changes were made to the curriculum, educational facilities and school buildings. The BMC also launched a ‘Mission Admission-Ekach Lakshya, Ek Laksha’ (aim to enrol 1 lakh students) in April.
Speaking about the initiative’s success, BMC education officer Rajesh Kankal, said, “The mission has received an overwhelming response. Of 1,02,500 students, 27,500 of them got enrolled in Hindi medium and 23,500 others in Urdu schools.”
To woo parents, the BMC changed its pedagogical strategy and roped in non-state board curricula such as CBSE, ICSE and Cambridge to their schools. Now parents prefer to get their children enrolled in such schools, the another civic official remarked.
In another such wooing effort, the BMC started many educational schemes, including the distribution of 27 educational items like tabs and revamping school labs with modern facelift.
Since the number of students has increased significantly, the BMC will be filling around 800 vacant posts. A budgetary provision of Rs 3,370.24 crore has been made in the current financial year. The BMC schools impart learning in Marathi, Hindi, English, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Gujarati. Currently, over 3 lakh students are enrolled in the BMC schools.
