The city will soon have 396 new municipal kindergartens, bringing the total number of balwadis run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to 900.
The existing 504 balwadis cater only to 15,000 children and the new kindergartens will raise this number to 27,000. The BMC has tied up with 22 NGOs to run the 396 new balwadis with 30 students in each class. The kindergartens will be run on the premises of municipal schools and children can be enrolled free of cost.
An officer in the Education Department said that the BMC provides primary and secondary education across eight language mediums to around 3 lakh students in 1,050 schools. However, the lack of sufficient balwadis led to parents putting their children in private schools. To meet this need, the BMC decided to start new balwadis.
The officer said, “We don’t want to lose students simply because our schools do not have kindergartens. With 900 kindergarten facilities, we will be closer to the number of schools we run. We hope this move will help retain students.”
The BMC will pay each partnering NGO ₹10,000 to cover salaries of teachers and attendants. It will also provide uniforms, books, stationery to the kindergarten students. Though the BMC has designed the curriculum, the NGO can introduce new learning initiatives at its own cost. NGOs have the freedom to choose the medium of education.
Milin Sawant, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Education), said, “We decided to give financial incentive to NGOs because we found that earlier many NGOs had not paid their teachers for months. Parents started raising complaints with us.”
Mr. Sawant said the BMC was not running the balwadis on its own because pre-primary education is not its responsibility as per the law and it would be expensive. Of the 396 new classes, 133 will be in the Marathi medium, 92 in Urdu, 87 in Hindi, 25 in Gujarati, 23 in English and the remaining in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil. The medium of instruction is mostly Marathi in the existing kindergartens.
The maximum number of new balwadis will be started in Matunga and Wadala. B Ward, comprising Dongri and Pydhonie; and C Ward, consisting of Bhendi Bazaar, which did not have a single balwadi at present, will now have five and 12 kindergartens respectively.
The officer said, “These new classes will be child friendly and painted in attractive colours and with images of cartoon characters.”
