Fate of students in limbo after merger of schools in Rajasthan
The Rajasthan education department merged 449 schools earlier this month, considering their poor infrastructure and low enrolment, a move that has raised eyebrows
“It is unfortunate that I cannot go to the new school building near my house any more, and have to walk for 2 kilometres every morning. I become so tired that I feel sleepy in school,” said Nuram, who was a student of New Sanjay Nagar Government Primary School, Jaipur, which was merged with the Rajeev Nagar Higher Secondary School by the education department on January 18.
“Many children in our area dropped out of the school due to the distance. But, my parents got me admitted to the school hoping that the construction work of the new building will be finished soon and I will not have to walk so far daily,” the eight-year-old said while slowing down her pace due to exhaustion.
Nuram’s school has a total of 160 students from the city’s Bhatta Basti slum area. In 2018, their school building had suddenly collapsed following a heavy monsoon, prompting the local administration to temporarily shift the students to the secondary school in Rajeev Nagar. “Meanwhile, the then MLA Mahesh Joshi contributed about ₹45 lakh from his fund to renovate the building, so that the local students don’t have to go to a different school. The construction work of the building was finished last December, and it was all set to be inaugurated this month. But as fate would have it, now the school no longer exists after the merger,” said Altaf Muhammed, Nuram’s teacher.
Nuram and Altaf’s school was listed among the 449 institutions that were merged by the Rajasthan education department earlier this month considering their poor infrastructure, and low enrolment, a move that has raised eyebrows, as many of them were later found to have a good enrolment number, newly constructed buildings, while some of them are also exclusively for girls or specially abled children.
“Teaching at someone else’s school feels like we have lost our identity. This new building could have accommodated at least 500 to 600 students at the same time. It would have helped many other kids to pursue education in this area where most of the people belong to the economically backward class in the state capital. But after the merging, we are concerned to lose many of our existing students,” Altaf said while standing in front of the locked gate of his new school building.
The school stands near a huge under-construction residential complex, where a bunch of kids play in the morning. The freshly painted orange building boasts two huge floors with a vast playing ground in the front highlighting the name of “New Sanjay Nagar Government Primary School” in navy blue at the top.
On the other hand, the school with which it was merged can only afford to accommodate 160 students and has three teachers with a balcony and a small room, which is also used as a storeroom. Two more schools are also run there as they lack their own building for the last two years.
“We are a higher secondary school up to class 12 with 309 students and 16 teachers. We have 26 rooms to offer them of which at least six to seven are now given to the other three schools running on our campus. Two to three classes of our schools are also currently being run at the same room. After the new building of the New Sanjay Nagar Primary School was constructed, we hoped for a better management in our school as we thought they will now be shifted to their place. But, since it was merged, we have to go ahead with the same problem,” said the vice principal of the Rajeev Nagar Higher Secondary School, Anju Badiyadi.
In another instance, Bikaner’s Jassusar Gate Government Girls’ Senior Higher Secondary School with 300 students and Jodhpur’s Pratap Nagar Girls’ Senior Seondary School with 440 students were also merged with two boys’ schools in their respective locality, sparking a massive protest by the girls claiming that their parents are refusing to let them study together with boys.
A class 8 student of Jodhpur, Anita Kumari, said, “The merger policy framed that only the schools with less than 30 students will be merged. But the government had merged several schools with more than 300 to 400 students like us in an arbitrary way. Merging the girls’ schools with the boys’ makes no sense as it posed challenge for us to continue our education now. Our parents have denied to send us in the schools anymore. Will the government take this accountability?”
Following the development, last week, the students gathered at the Pratap Nagar Circle, chanting slogans and staging a demonstration, causing a traffic jam in the area. Witnesses reported that during the protest, some students climbed onto a parked police vehicle. The students also formed a human chain and sat on the roads to intensify their protest.
The chief district education officer (secondary), Jodhpur, Seema Sharma, said that “a factual report on the high-enrolment in girls’ schools had been submitted to the office of the joint director, and further action will be taken at their level.”
A school for the specially abled children in Bikaner, Pabu Pathshala Government Upper Primary School, was also merged with a general girls’ school causing challenges to the children to get access to the special facilities for the disabled people. A delegation of their parents have also reached at the Primary Education Directorate, Bikaner, last week, where they protested, and handed over a memorandum to the director demanding to de-merge the two schools.
Meanwhile, a controversy also erupted when two Urdu medium upper primary schools in Ajmer were found to be merged in the latest list with two Hindi medium schools. The two included Badbav Urdu Government Upper Primary School with 160 students and Andarkot Government Girls’ Upper Primary Schools with 300 students.
A teacher from the Badbav school said, “We are concerned about the education of our children ahead. They used to be taught every subject in Urdu in these schools. The Hindi medium schools have Urdu as an elective subject only while they also don’t have any specific teacher for it. The government did not give any direction on what language these students will give the paper or what will be their future from next academic session. Both the schools have also been running since 1941. We have written to the education department to reconsider the decision.”
Reacting to the development, an officer concerned from the education department, requesting anonymity, said, “We have received several complaints from various areas in the last few days. We are reviewing them. If something has found went wrong during the survey, we will take necessary action in future.”
The matter, meanwhile, sparked a political slugfest as the Congress has alleged the BJP government launched a “surgical strike” on the education while the BJP accused the Congress government of running the schools in a poor state over the years.
“BJP has launched a surgical strike on women’s education in Rajasthan by shutting the schools with good enrollment numbers. Their secret agenda is exposed, they do not want girls to study, write and go ahead,” former CM Ashok Gehlot wrote on X on January 18.
The school rationalisation project was first initiated in Rajasthan by former CM Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government in 2014, since when around 5,942 elementary schools and 16,026 secondary schools were merged till 2018, when the party lost to Congress in the assembly election, said official data.
Once the former CM Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government came to power in December, 2018, a total of 606 elementary ones and 796 secondary ones of the merged schools were also de-merged considering their potential to fetch more students and teachers in future, showed data.
Around 7,000 fresh schools were also opened or upgraded during the Congress rule in the last five years, an official estimated. Rajasthan has currently around 46,000 elementary schools and around 90,000 secondary schools operating in the state, according to the officials.
Meanwhile, the previous Congress-led government has also launched a pilot project in 2021 in which they converted at least 3,737 Hindi medium schools into Mahatma Gandhi English Medium Schools (MGEMS) aiming to provide the poor students with the English medium education facility at an affordable cost.
However, the present BJP-led government on January 4, had formed a five-member committee led by the deputy chief minister and higher education minister Prem Chand Bairwa to review the feasibility of those MGEMS schools and take a suitable decision on their continuation.