Telangana govt move to merge schools

There are 398 primary schools, four upper primary schools and three high schools with zero enrolment in the state. And about 980 primary schools, 10 upper primary schools and two high schools have enrolment between 1 and 10, according to the District Information System for Education report 2015-16

Hyderabad: If the Telangana government has its way, there would be only two types of schools in the state i.e. primary and high schools. A final decision is yet to be taken in this regard. The government is of the view that due to the lack of sufficient staff in upper primary (UP) schools, these schools are not viable and justice was not being done to children. As high schools have one teacher for every subject, it wants to merge UP schools with the nearby high schools to ensure that the quality education is maintained.

According to the norms, one UP school has been prescribed for every 3 km in a habitation. But high schools are available in most of the habitations within 3 km. Further, government intends to upgrade upper primary schools where there is no high school within a radius of 5 km.

According to the Directorate of School Education data, certain high schools are functioning with a strength of 40 or 50 children, below the minimum strength of 75 and such schools are functional within an area of one or two km. According to the rules, a high school should be located within a 5-km radius. The government may take a decision on the rationalisation of schools by clubbing the low strength uneconomic schools and establish a good school with all facilities at gram panchayat/ cluster level with good ambience, library, compound wall, ICT facilities with five teachers and one headmaster.

According to the District Information System for Education report 2015-16, there are 398 primary schools, four upper primary schools and three high schools with zero enrolment in the state. And about 980 primary schools, 10 upper primary schools and two high schools have enrolment between 1 and 10.

Further, there are 2,333 primary schools, 39 upper primary schools and four high schools which have strength of 11 to 20. The government may take a decision to club these schools functioning located on the same campus or in the same habitation within one kilometre radius by following the enrolment norms.

It is of the view that clubbing facilitates for providing at least three teachers in primary school, i.e. one teacher completely responsible for teaching Telugu/Urdu and the second teacher would teach English for Classes I to V and a third teacher for Mathematics from Classes I to V.

According to surveys conducted by ASER, NCERT and SCERT, about 40 to 50 per cent of the children are unable to read and write in their mother tongue and more than 70 per cent in English. Similarly, children are unable to do basic arithmetical operations of subtraction, multiplication and division. In order to address this issue, the government has called for suggestions.

Further, the government intends go in for evaluation of schools on certain standards as per the guidelines issued by National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA). The evaluation may be initially through self appraisal followed by external appraisal. About eight indicators of performance of schools would be developed and based on the indicators school evaluation and accreditation would be taken up.