643 primary schools shut down in three years; dropout rate reaches 10.7% in secondary schools

Mumbai: The number of primary schools is on decline in Maharashtra for the last three years

Mumbai: The number of primary schools is on decline in Maharashtra for the last three years. As many as 643 primary schools have been shut down between 2019 till 2022, reveals the economic survey of Maharashtra for 2022-23.

HT Image

The survey also found that the dropout rate is on the rise in secondary schools of the state. The dropout rate has gone up to 10.7% in 2021-22 from 4.6% in 2020-21 and 6.4% in 2019-20. The state has not shared data for dropouts in higher secondary schools.

The survey report was tabled in the state legislature on Monday.

According to the survey, between 2019-20 and 2020-21, 153 primary schools had to shut down while in the next one year (between 2020-21 and 2021-22), the number of primary schools closing down rose to 490, states the survey.

This three-year period was also affected with Covid-19 pandemic and successive lockdowns were imposed to control its spread. This could be one of the major reasons behind the primary schools ceasing their operations, said officials from the school education department.

The education sector was badly affected owing to Covid-19 as private establishments had adopted measures such as jobs cuts and salary cuts leading to financial crises in most of the families. Consequently, students did not pay fees and various educational institutions had no choice but to shut down their operations.

In the upper primary schools, the dropout rate had increased to 1.53% in 2020-21 and has been the same in 2021-22. In 2019-20, it was at 1.17%, states survey.

The state government said that under the right to education (RTE) act, efforts are on to bring every out-of-school child between six to 14 years of age back in the educational stream.

“During 2021-22, in all 21,731 out-of-school children were mainstreamed and of them 9,608 children were given special training. During 2022-23 (up to November 2022), 17,818 out-of-school children have been mainstreamed, of which special training is proposed for 10,522 children,” clarified the state education department in the survey report.

During 2022-23 up to November, 78,790 students got admission under this act, it adds.

However, when it comes to secondary and higher secondary schools, their numbers are rising every year. In 2019-20, there were 28,093 schools, which increased to 28,505 in 2020-21 and by 2021-22 their number went up to 28,612 schools, says the survey.

Similarly, the number of beneficiaries under Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman Yojana previously known as mid-day meal scheme also dropped to 46.12 lakh in 2021-22 from 60.70 lakh in 2020-21. The situation is now improving with the number of beneficiaries reaching to 55.20 lakh in 2022-23 (upto October 2022), the survey divulges.