Chennai civic body to roll out SWOT analysis of all its schools

The initiative will take a look at the admission statistics of the past three years — Photo: B. Jothi Ramalingam

In a renewed effort to give Chennai Corporation schools a leg up, the civic body’s officials are making a fresh assessment of all its 282 schools through an admission analysis.

Sources at the Corporation said a SWOT analysis would be conducted by taking into account admission statistics of the past three years in all Corporation schools.

“We are trying to understand why admission may have dropped in certain areas and figure ways to retain the children in our schools,” a Corporation official said.

Senior Corporation officials will be making field visits to schools.

“A senior official visited one of our schools in north Chennai recently, to assess the possibility of converting it into a residential school under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,” the official added.

About 56 schools had been merged between the period of 1999 and 2011 due to low enrolment. Recently, a resolution was passed at the Corporation council to convert 12 defunct Corporation schools into shelters for homeless persons. Further, unused school buildings have been turned into offices for the Corporation.

‘On a par with private schools’

Corporation officials, however, said that as far as quality of education is concerned, the schools are on a par with private ones.

“Maybe we lack good marketing skills, but our students are doing just as well. We are just facing stiff competition from private schools, as parents believe it is below their station to admit their children in Corporation schools. We need to figure out a way to dispel that myth,” a senior Corporation official said.

An issue faced by Corporation schools in labour-intensive areas is dropout. “Schools in areas such as Taramani and Vyasarpadi have dropouts as parents may be migrant labourers. We are trying to convert such schools into residential ones so that education is not disrupted,” an official said.

Minimum learning material is being prepared for all subjects for students of classes X and XII, based on performance in the quarterly examinations.

“We had a lot of failures in English and Mathematics. We are trying to train these children with the material,” the official added.