Mumbai: BMC wants to improve standard of education, to geo-map nursery schools, pay teachers more

Mumbai: BMC wants to improve standard of education, to geo-map nursery schools, pay teachers more

In a bid to rationalise the number of nurseries, so that poor students are not deprived of education, the civic body has now decided to undertake geo-mapping of 900 of them across the city

Kalpesh MhamunkarUpdated: Sunday, July 24, 2022, 10:05 AM IST
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BMC | File

After a slew of efforts to improve the standard of imparting knowledge in its schools, the BMC has now decided to improve the condition of its nursery schools. In a bid to rationalise the number of nurseries, so that poor students are not deprived of education, the civic body has now decided to undertake geo-mapping of 900 of them across the city. This involves collecting location-based data and creating a map.

This will give BMC an idea on which locations have sparse coverage and can be provided with more nursery schools. It also wants to strengthen the existing nurseries with a focus on the diet and nutrition of enrolled children. As part of course correction, it has also increased the salary of teachers and assistants.

In the past couple of years, the civic body has been working on the standard of its schools. It started CBSE, ICSE International board, and Cambridge curriculum in its schools. It also renovated its school buildings to attract more enrolments.

Recently it claimed that its schools have enrolled 1,02,000 new students this year. The civic body said that though its schools are spread over all 24 administrative wards in Mumbai, the number of nursery schools are far less than required. To facilitate the enrolment of poor students, it wants to open more such schools in areas where there are no nurseries in the vicinity.

A few years ago, the BMC rationalised the need and increased the number of nurseries, though with shortcomings. This time, it also wants to strengthen the existing nursery schools with systems to monitor the health and diet of enrolled children, besides recruiting more teachers and helpers with adequate remuneration.

Joint Commissioner Ajit Kumbhar said, “There are 900 nurseries in Mumbai with 1,800 employees. Their demand to increase the salary was pending for the last five years. This year, we have taken the decision to increase their salaries by 60 per cent. Until this year, they were getting Rs 5,000 per month, which has been increased to Rs 8,000 per month. Helpers will now get Rs 5,000 per month, which was earlier Rs 3,000.” Moreover, they were not paid for two months of vacations, which has been reduced to one month now.

The BMC started its nursery schools five years ago with 396 units. At that time, though, there was no prior knowledge of how many are required in which area. Officials said that geo-mapping will help elaborate on that knowledge.

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