The Sarva Shiksha Abiyan has turned its focus on 263 government and aided schools in the district found to be running without sufficient students.
The District Information System of Education, which provides vital statistics to SSA, has found that 263 schools, from lower primary to upper primary level, functions with less than 60 students. This is considered uneconomical.
Of the total uneconomic schools in the district, 53 schools have less than 20 students and the remaining 210 have numbers between 20 and 60 necessitating urgent intervention to arrest the decline in these schools. The lower primary school at Sambuvattom had become non-functional for the last two years for want of sufficient students.
The decline in the number of students in the government schools, which is a State-wide phenomenon, has prompted SSA to come out with a 12-point programme aimed to improve the infrastructure and academic environment in these schools. Across the State, as many as 3,523 schools are found to be uneconomical, said an SSA official.
District Project Officer, SSA, M. Rajesh told The Hindu that during the current academic year the focus would be on 135 uneconomic institutions in the district. Trained personnel recruited from resource centres would be deployed in each of the 135 schools to monitor the teaching level, students’ adaptability to the teaching methods and overall functioning of the schools.
“We conducted a training programme for the resource personnel last month and they have been attached to the 135 schools. They will act as supporting staff and will be visiting the schools on a daily basis,” Mr. Rajesh said.
The overall focus would be to improve student’s efficiency in Malayalam, English, and Mathematics and make the students computer-literate.
The challenge, he said was to dispel the general perception about the academic environment in government schools. For this purpose, special attention would be given to improve the quality of teaching and provide better infrastructure, including laboratory and library facilities .
