37% of govt schools have less than 50 students on rolls: HRD Ministry

The data has been complied for the first time by the govt in an attempt to encourage states to rationalise, merge or close down schools that cater to such few students as it is a waste of resources.

Just over one-third or 37.36 per cent of the total number of government schools have an enrollment of fewer than 50 children, according to data compiled by the HRD ministry. 

The ignominious trio leading the charts are Goa (with 76.9 per cent government schools having less than 50 students), Himachal Pradesh (73.2 per cent) and Uttarakhand (72.3 per cent). 

On the other hand, Chandigarh, Delhi and Bihar are among the ones with the lowest number of schools that have fewer than 50 children. Chandigarh has 115 government schools and all have over 50 students studying.

The data has been complied for the first time by the government in an attempt to encourage states to rationalise, merge or close down schools that cater to such few students as it is a gross waste of state resources. According to Aditya Natraj, CEO, Kaivalaya Education Foundation (KEF), “Any school with fewer than 50 students will have very little learning and teaching happening.”

Fewer than 50 students means less than 10 children in a particular class as most of these schools — be it primary, secondary or both — have at least five classes. 

Most of these schools are in remote locations and the government is forced to provide a 

building and some basic infrastructure — all of which are being put to very little use. 

These schools, regardless of the number of students, have basic staff and teachers. 

Government teachers are extremely well paid whether they attend school or not. Even if they attend school, most of them don’t end up teaching. 

Some of the schools have lost students as parents have found better private options nearby and don’t mind loosening their purse strings for their children’s education. 

Further, many private schools have buses to ferry children — something which relieves parents from the task of getting their kids to and back from school. 

Amitav Virmani, CEO of Education Alliance — an organisation working towards transforming government schools — says that even within a 3-km range in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar alone, there are 10 government primary schools run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). 

Most of these schools have fewer students than they can accommodate — around 120-130 children while the capacity of these schools is around 250-300 students. So, it is a waste of resources. Moreover, according to the Right to Education (RTE), for every 30 children, one teacher will have to be provided. 

So, if a school has 120 students over eight different classes, the school will be given four teachers. Typically, the schools then club classes.

“KG and Class I will be clubbed or even KG, I and II. So, there is utter confusion. You have students of multiple classes in the same room, leading to utter confusion for students as well as teachers,” added Virmani. 

He said that this leads to much bigger classes. RTE, he argues, needs to look at a classroom-teacher ratio rather than a pupil-teacher ratio. If a classroom has a certain number of kids, they should be allotted a teacher.

Bikkrama Daulet Singh, managing director of Central Square Foundation, feels that the problem is more widespread. He said that  data shows that 70-75 per cent of elementary schools in India have multi-grade classrooms. He argues that these small schools should be consolidated with other schools in the neighbourhood (less than 1 km), “as long as it does not reduce access and lead to drop-outs”. Once schools are consolidated, teacher deployment should also be rationalised.   

The ministry has been encouraging states to look into how they can rationalise, shut or merge schools. Education Secretary Anil Swarup has been actively engaged with states to see how this can best be done without reducing access.

Four or five states have already embarked on this exercise. In Telangana, 75 schools with zero enrolment have been closed. Between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, around 10,000 schools are proposed to be shut down. In Uttarakhand, recently 700 schools across the two districts of Kumaon and Garwhal have been closed down as they had 10 or less students attending or enrolled. In 2015, Punjab closed down 159 primary schools with less than 11 students each.

Rajasthan, too, has undertaken a massive rationalisation exercise in the last 3-4 years. It has been shutting down unviable schools with very few students and has been moving students to larger schools called Adarsh Vidyalayas that are fully resourced for the last 3-4 years. These schools have almost 2,000 students and all the resources required — not just teachers but all the support staff and better infrastructure. About 9,895 schools have been identified across gram panchayats to be converted into Adarsh schools there.