The drop in the number of students in first standard to tenth standard in government aided schools across the district over the last eight years portrays an interesting pattern.
While the number of students had always shown a downward trend with each passing year, there was a quantum jump in the figures since 2011-12 academic year.
Education department officials said this coincided with the decision to replace the age-old and unscientific practice of sixth day head count with the Aadhaar-based Unique Identity (UID) number. Till then many aided schools might have been manipulating the student numbers using ‘hired’ students during the head count so as to hide the actual drop in students, which helped them sustain and generate lucrative teachers’ posts, an official said.
School managements may have realised the danger of being exposed as UID-based staff fixation hardly leaves any room for manipulation of numbers. So there was a sudden drop in number of students in first standard to tenth standard from 2011-12.
The drop of 617 students in first standard enrolment in 2010-11 increased to 1,415 in 2011-12 whereas the drop in the total number of students in first standard to tenth standard almost doubled from 5,516 to 10,723 during the same period. The drop in the total number surged even higher in 2012-13 academic year when it rose to 14,670 before stabilising at 9,241 during the present academic year when the UID-based staff fixation was introduced.
This was in stark contrast to the times when the conventional head-count system still ruled the roost and the drop in total number of students never once touched the 10,000 mark. For instance, aided schools in the district accounted for a drop of just 3,442 students from first standard to tenth standard in 2007-08 compared to the year before. The number rose to 7,558 in 2008-09 before registering a drop of 6,441 in 2009-10.
Though the number of students in government schools had also declined over the years, there was no violent variation in the numbers before and after the announcement of UID-based staff fixation in 2011-12.
In fact, the numbers have been encouraging since then. The drop of 4,997 in total number of students from first standard to tenth standard in 2011-12 compared to the previous academic year improved in 2012-13 as there was a drop of only 3,924 students. It further improved in this academic year as there was a drop of only 2,334.
The drop in the number of students in government and aided schools has put the fate of many of the 13,500-odd teachers in the district in jeopardy. Teachers were in excess even if the teacher-student ratio was brought down from the present 1:45 to 1:30 as considered under the Right to Education Act, a senior education department official told The Hindu .
He said it was for the government to decide whether to preserve the excess teachers as protected or to deploy them in vacancies in other districts.
