E-Paper
53 private schools shut in last two years in Ludhiana
Notably, other than these schools, after the Union government’s decision to shut the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) schools from March 31,the 32 centres in Ludhiana— managed by non-governmental organisations— were also closed taking the tally of schools closed in the district in past two years to 85
Ever since the Covid pandemic, 53 private schools in the district have been shut due to paucity of funds pertaining to poor strength of students.
In most of these schools, according to the officials, the enrolment of students was already meagre.
The closure of these schools came to fore after all schools in the district were asked to update their database on the E-Punjab portal and on the website of the Government of India for Unified District Information System (UDISE) survey 2021-22.
Vishal Mittal, district coordinator , management information system (MIS), said, “E-Punjab is an official portal of the state education department. Every school is bound to update its database, including the details related to infrastructure, enrolment, staff, new construction, etc. In this regard, letters were issued to the schools. During this process, we received numerous letters from the schools to temporarily close their respective school IDs on the portal as the schools were closed due to decline in enrolment.”
The schools IDs were then closed on the portal following which a list of such schools was sent to the head office of the education department in SAS Nagar.
Notably, other than these schools, after the Union government’s decision to shut the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) schools from March 31,the 32 centres in Ludhiana— managed by non-governmental organisations— were also closed taking the tally of schools closed in the district in past two years to 85.
The education department has prepared a list of the private schools which are no longer operational and were closed in sessions 2020-21 and 2021-22, including MJK Memorial Public High School, Deep Senior Secondary School and Chandigarh Public School, Tibba Road.
An officer in the education department said the private schools failed to pay salaries to their teachers, and a few even failed to pay the electricity bills after suffering huge losses due to the pandemic as schools remained closed for a long time adhering to the government orders.
“Even after being allowed to reopen, parents were hesitant or either incapable of paying fees to the schools. Thus, after garnering humongous losses, these schools had to shut down,” an officer in the education department said.
Migration to government schools
After the orders released by the former education secretary to increase enrolment in the government schools and to allow students from private schools to migrate to government schools even if they don’t submit their transfer certificate or other documents required for admissions, thousands of students took admissions in government schools, further impacting the business of the private schools.
