Govt may close schools with meager student enrollment
Govt may close schools with meager student enrollment
Srinagar, March 12, 2021 :
To ferry students to nearby schools in Govt transport
The School Education Department is mulling to close the government schools having meager enrollment of students.
The move comes as most of the schools complain of the dearth of teaching staff for the students.
However, the School Education Department is holding deliberations for closing the schools with meager enrollment and providing transport facilities to the students of these schools to ferry them to the nearby educational institutions.
Talking to Media, Administrative Secretary of School Education Department B K Singh said they were already in a process of general transfer of teachers, masters and lecturers.
“ The process will be completed by March 25. After that the dearth of staff will be addressed in schools.
We will also go for rationalisation of the teaching staff in schools to streamline the availability of teachers in the schools,” he said.
The administrative secretary said they would ensure that each primary school has at least two teachers while four teachers would be posted in every middle school.
“ In case of schools having meager enrollment, we will shift the students to the nearby schools to continue their studies.
We will use our own transport to ferry these students. We can’t run the schools with meager enrollment as separate institutions,” he said.
Singh said running these schools with meager enrollment would not be good for the department.
“ We will provide a transport facility to these students and it will have a financial implication of around Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per month which can be managed by the department,” he said.
The offline classes for the students from 6th to 12th have already commenced but the students enrolled in schools of rural areas complain of the dearth of teaching staff.
The schools are facing dearth of teaching staff as the School Education Department has not finalised the transfer process or done any rationalisation of teachers.
Media already reported about the issue to highlight the flawed rationalisation process carried by the department in the past which failed to address the problems of scarcity of teaching staff in the schools.
“ We are trying to streamline the entire system.
Transfer and rationalisation of teachers is such an exhaustive exercise but we will not leave any room for any mistakes and won’t allow any wrong doings,” B K Singh said.
As already reported by Greater Kashmir, J&K in 2015 clubbed 2406 schools including 1834 schools working from rented accommodations and 572 government-owned schools in Kashmir for having meager enrollment of students.
Around 1490 schools were clubbed in Jammu region as well.
The rationalisation of schools was done to streamline the Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) in the government schools.
The process was started after 124 schools were found having zero student population.
In some other schools there were less than 10 students on the rolls.
The merger of over 2400 schools in Kashmir alone gave a surplus staff of 3553 teachers in these co-located schools.
“ These teachers were to be utilised in the schools having dearth of staff but the irony is that the department didn’t utilise services of these teachers properly.
Resultantly, the students in rural schools are deprived of adequate staff,” an official said.
