The Odisha Parents’ Federation has in a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday urged for reservation for the students passed out from Government-run schools in engineering and medical colleges. However, the students of Government schools should have qualified in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) to get reservation.
At present, there are 63,280 Government Primary and Upper Primary Schools, 6,193 Government and Aided Secondary Schools, 849 Recognised High Schools and 151 permitted High Schools in the State.
In 2019-20, about 5.60 lakh students appeared at the HSC Examinations. In Plus Two 2, nearly 10 lakh students appeared in Arts, 97,377 lakh in Science, 25,785 in Commerce in 1,641 private and Government Secondary Schools.
A total 37,459 students appeared and 19,600 cleared the NEET Examinations in 2020 in the State. Meanwhile, 5,409 Primary and Upper Primary Schools have been closed due to shortage of students in 2019-20. Till March 2020, there are 57,967 schools. On March 11, 2020, the Government has notified to merge 11,517 Primary and Upper Primary Schools. Then, there would be only 4,6450 schools after 2020-21, If this trend continues then in next 20 years, there will be hardly 1,000 to 5,000 Government schools in rural Odisha only. This would be a disaster for the education sector in the State, said federation chairman Basudev Bhatt.
He urged the Chief Minister to instruct the School and Mass Education Department to withdraw the decision for closure of such a huge number of Government schools.
Then organise consultations on how to improve the education system in Odisha on the Delhi or Kerala models, start model schools under BSE and CHSE Board in all gram panchayats, NACs and have a strong mechanism to monitor the teachers’ presence during school time and engage a third party mechanism to continuously monitor and keep vigilance on the teachers’ activities at regular intervals, Bhatt added.