Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
DRDO

According to the report released by the Praja Foundation titled ‘State of Municipal Education In Mumbai’ on Wednesday Schools run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are into deep trouble due to falling enrollment of new children. the state of education released reveals that the situation has come to a deep level where the 426 municipal schools in Mumbai were running with one to 100 students while 53 schools had only one to 20 students and were therefore on the verge of being merged with other schools.

There has been observed a steady drop in the number of students going to school every year, which declined by as much as 23 percent in the last five years, from over 4 lakh in 2013-14 to over 3 lakh in 2017-18.

As per the report, enrolments in civic schools have declined from 3,43,621 in 2016-17 to 3,11,663 the following year — a stark 9 percent fall. According to Praja, going by the current trend, the BMC will have no students by the year 2027-28.

Moreover, 94 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by the NGO across 24,290 Mumbai households said they wanted to shift their wards to private schools as they are ‘not satisfied’ with civic ones. The report also says the number of students being enrolled in unrecognized schools has increased from 24,155 to 40,095.

Stating that parents are looking for opportunities to enroll their children in private unaided schools or unrecognized schools, said Nitai Mehta, founder, and trustee of Praja Foundation, said, “If the municipal corporation does not do something about the quality of education in civic schools, all their students will gradually leave for private schools.”

Ghanshyam Sonar, convenor of Saman Shikshan Mulbhut Adhikar Samiti, said that the decision to shut schools down shows the civic body’s lack of interest in running them. “Shutting a school because there are few students is basically a tactic to divert students to private schools. In many parts of the city, students have to go to private schools because there isn’t a BMC school around,” Sonar said.

As per the report, enrolment for Class 1 itself dropped 24 percent in the past five years, from nearly 40,000 in 2013-14 to a little over 30,000 in 2017-18. The attendance had been getting thinner for five years before that, which forced the closure of 229 schools since 2008-09.

Meanwhile, the report had one silver lining: the BMC’s budget expenditure or the amount that is set aside solely for education every year — was increased by 36 percent in the period in question. In 2013-14 the budget expenditure was `1,540 crore while in 2017-18 it was `2,094 crore. “The civic body is putting in more money for education, which is a good thing, but it should be channelized in a better way and it should be more accountable to get better results,” Mr. Mehta said.

As per the Praja Foundation’s report, enrolments at civic schools continued to dip. From 62,692 new students in 2016-17, enrolments came down to 56,969 in 2017-18. The greatest fall in numbers was recorded in Hindi-medium schools, followed by Urdu- and Marathi-medium schools respectively. In the last five years, enrolments to Class 1 have seen a 24% dip and 87.8% of the students who had enrolled in Class 1 in 2013-14 reported that they had continued their education till Class 5 in 2017-18.

The report also revealed that the schools under the system of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Mumbai Public Schools (MPS) have been proved way better than the Schools run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

The report stated the increase in enrollments and dropout rates of the schools, under the scheme of PPP, to be 18 percent and two percent respectively. It has been observed a six percent rise in enrollments and two percent dropout rate in MPS schools.

As per the report, total enrolment in MPS schools which run under the full support of PPP scheme was 8,168 in 2017-18 while in 2015-16, it used to be 6,924. Similarly, the dropout rate in such schools last year was 135, which used to be 185 in 2015-16. NGOs like Aishabai Haji Abdul Latif Charitable Trust, Akanksha, Aseema, Educo, Muktangan, Teach For India and the Scholar’s Education Trust, among others, are currently partnered with BMC schools. The dropout rate in Akanksha was only 9 percent in 2017-18 while Teach For India and Muktangan’s were 21 and 24, respectively.

“It cannot, however, be said that the performance of MPS schools is positive because they are run by private NGOs since non-PPP MPS schools also show a positive performance,” the report said. There are 19 MPS schools and 23 non-PPP MPS schools. The report further stated, “The performance of all MPS schools can, therefore, be attributed to the MPS format of schooling from kindergarten to Class 10 more than the PPP scheme.”

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