To improve the learning environment and outcomes for school students, more than 11500-odd schools in Odisha with student strength less than 40 would soon be closed and merged with nearest schools.
A notification by school and mass education department said the integration of primary, upper primary and high schools with the nearby bigger schools to happen before April this year would lead to fully functional schools with increase in number of teacher per class and concentrated investment of resources.
For a Primary school, a nearby Primary (I-V)/ Upper Primary (I-VIII/VI-VIII)/ Secondary (I-X), will be identified for consolidation. Similarly for an Upper Primary (I-VIII/VI-VIII), a nearby Upper Primary (I-VIII/VI-VIII) or high school (I-X/VI-X) would be identified for the merger process.
As per the notification, such schools with students less than 20 or 40 would be merged with bigger nearby schools called “Lead schools”. The consolidation would make schools aspirational for students and result in improvement of Pupil-Teacher Ratio. “There would be better infrastructure facilities, better academic environment with additional TLM facilities, e-Learning and co-curricular facilities. This will also improve learning and teaching time available to teachers and students through reduction in administrative burden on teachers,” the notification said.
To make the integration of the schools with the Lead schools easier, the government has asked the district education authorities to verify the details of each schools as all such consolidation would be physical in nature and the students have to be physically transferred to the Lead School. Every student from the schools that are facing closure will be provided a one-time facilitation allowance of Rs 3,000 on their admission to the Lead School. All teachers/HMs/Staff (including mid-day meal cook etc.) of satellite schools will also move to the Lead School without any change in their service conditions. If the Lead school distance is beyond 1 km, transport allowance as per RTE norms would be provided to the students.
{{/usCountry}}To make the integration of the schools with the Lead schools easier, the government has asked the district education authorities to verify the details of each schools as all such consolidation would be physical in nature and the students have to be physically transferred to the Lead School. Every student from the schools that are facing closure will be provided a one-time facilitation allowance of Rs 3,000 on their admission to the Lead School. All teachers/HMs/Staff (including mid-day meal cook etc.) of satellite schools will also move to the Lead School without any change in their service conditions. If the Lead school distance is beyond 1 km, transport allowance as per RTE norms would be provided to the students.
{{/usCountry}}Once such schools are closed, the building and other infrastructure will be handed over to the Panchayati Raj and Drinking water department. The entire process would be completed within 15 days of consolidation.
The move to consolidate the schools comes at a time when the student enrolment continues to decline in Odisha schools even as crores of Rupees are spent under mid-day meal, free uniform and free textbooks to motivate children for admission into government schools while the enrolment in private schools are rising. Huge vacancy in the position of teachers and headmasters in government schools has affected quality of education. Last month Odisha school and mass education minister Samir Ranjan Dash told the Odisha Assembly that of the 46,332 primary and upper primary schools in the State, 18,589 do not have headmasters. In 8,076 high schools, there is a vacancy of 11,588 assistant teachers.
The National Achievement Survey(NAS) conducted by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) in 2018 found that only 53% of students in Odisha were able to answer questions on basic competencies correctly. Similarly, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) (Rural), 2018 revealed that only 33.1% students of Class 5 could recognise numbers between 10 and 99 while just 24.5% could do subtraction.