Low enrolment: 621 schools to be closed, merged or downgraded in Himachal

The Directorate of School Education has identified as many as 621 schools, primary to senior secondary, for de-notification, merger and downgrading due to zero or negligible enrolment. Education Minister Rohit Thakur gave the nod to denotify 103 zero enrolment schools with immediate effect in a review meeting of the education department here today.

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“For merging and downgrading the remaining 518 schools, we will send the proposal to Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu for the final decision,” said Rohit Thakur.

The government has already de-notified or merged over 1,200 schools. The number of such schools would cross 1,800 as and when the Chief Minister gives a go-ahead to the latest proposal of the education department. Such large-scale closing of schools has been criticised by the Opposition, but the Education Minister calls it the need of the hour.

“We will be compromising the future of our children if we don’t give them quality education. And that’s only possible through consolidation and rationalisation of our resources,” said Thakur.

Even though a large number of schools have been denotified or merged over the last two years, the students of the state have registered remarkable improvement in the latest ASER report. The Class X and Class XII results, too, were significantly better this time than the previous year.

The Education Minister further pointed out that over 1,100 teachers would be freed up from the de-notification, merger and downgrading of these 621 schools. “We will send these teachers to the far-flung areas where there’s a paucity of teachers,” said Thakur. There’s a shortage of teachers in the rural areas of many districts, especially district Shimla, Chamba, Sirmaur and Kullu.

The department’s recent effort to rationalise the deployment of teachers did not succeed, mainly due to political exigencies. “We are preparing a fresh rationalisation plan, which will be teacher friendly. Deputy Directors in all the districts are working on it,” the minister said.

Further, the minister said the decision had been taken to penalise the principals and headmasters where the result would be below 25 per cent. “Until now, only teachers and lecturers were penalised for poor results. Now, we have decided to penalise the higher authorities as well for poor results,” said the minister.