All Govt primary and Upper Primary Schools in U’khand having ten or less number of students would be closed and merged with the nearest school. There are a total of 2711 schools in the State which have less than ten enrollments out of which 2425 are Primary Schools ( PS) and 291 are Upper Primary Schools ( UPS). Giving the education department a go ahead for closing such schools, the State Cabinet on Monday directed that the students of these schools should be enrolled in the nearest schools. The Cabinet Min Madan Kaushik said that the department has been also directed to ensure that the process of merger of schools should be done in accordance of the provision of Right to Education (RTE) Act. The Act mandates that a school should be in a radius of one km of the students which means that the schools located in an area where there is no school within the stipulated area under the RTE act would not get closed down despite the low student strength. There a total of 12339 PS and 2796 UPS in Uttarakhand. The number of students in these schools has witnessed a sharp decrease over the past few yrs. Now by merging the schools, the Edu depts wants to consolidate its human and other resources for increasing the quality of education.