State edu dept to map all city schools

Starting next month, the state government's school education department will begin preparing a master plan of all primary, secondary, aided and unaided schools in the city.

Starting next month, the state government's school education department will begin preparing a master plan of all primary, secondary, aided and unaided schools in the city.

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The objective of the master plan is to come up with neighbourhood schools within three years and to improve the quality of education.

The department is contemplating outsourcing the Geographical Information System-based mapping to a private company. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan project director, V Radha, who will oversee the mapping of city schools said, "Since urban mapping is more complex, we might float a tender to include a private company."

Last year, the government began mapping schools in rural areas and the master plan is nearing completion. Nagpur-based Maharashtra Remote Sensing Application Centre and the Maharashtra Primary Education Council have prepared the master plan for schools in rural areas

Officials said that mapping schools in the city would be a challenge. "In a rural area, distance and population are the only factors that determine the number of schools in the area. For city schools, we will have to study the density of population in the area, linguistic trends, infrastructure, student-teacher ratio and the quality of education in existing schools in every area," said Rajendra Darda, minister for school education.