Faced with depleting student enrollment and impending closure of more than 1,900 schools, the education department of Uttarakhand is gearing itself up for a massive enrollment drive in government schools on May 6. The department has asked the heads of all schools and teachers to target all the children between six to fourteen years of age, who for some reason or other are not enrolled in the schools. The Primary education director, Seema Jaunsari said that a similar enrollment drive was held on April 06 which proved to be a success. The department’s data reveals that more than 150000 children were enrolled in the government schools of the state on the day. The department officials are hoping that since the model school concept introduced last year has proved successful, large number of students would get admissions there. The department has set up one model school in every block of the state.
On the day of enrollment drive the teachers would inform the benefits like Mid Day Meal (MDM), free textbooks, free uniforms and better quality of teachers in the government schools to common people.
The co-curricular activities, sports, scholarship programmes, computer education and Child health programmes would also be discussed by the teachers to attract the parents to get their wards admitted in the government schools. The District Education Officers (DEO), Block Education Officers (BEO), block and cluster coordinators would visit the schools with fewer enrolments and undertake measures to improve the number of students.
The depleting student strength in the government schools is a cause of worry for the education department. Various data suggests that private schools are fast catching up with the Government schools even in rural areas notwithstanding the fact that the state government has doubled the budget on education since 2009. The schools located in the remote and mountainous parts of the State are worst affected. large scale migration coupled with increasing charm of private schools among the rural folks has hit Government schools hard.
Concerned on fewer enrolments in thousand of government schools, new education minister recently announced that the schools with student strength of ten would be closed. He said that the Government is planning to open residential schools in one cluster so that the students of nearby villages are admitted there.