‘8,000 schools were closed to obtain World Bank loan’: TDP accuses Andhra Pradesh government

Representative image | Photo Credit: PRASAD RVS

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has made a scathing attack on the State government, accusing it of closing down 8,000 schools in the State.

Addressing the media on Thursday, TDP official spokesperson K. Pattabhiram said the State government had put the future of the students at stake with the sole objective of obtaining ₹2,000 crore World Bank loan.

“The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) report points out that conditions are imposed to avail of the loan. The condition is that the department shall avoid increase in recurring Human Resource (HR) expenditure by keeping the additional requirement, if any, to the bare minimum,” he said.

The report further said that the Support Andhra’s Learning Transformation (SALT) project with a loan assistance of US $250 million (₹2,000 crore) from the World Bank  was aimed at giving a push to various initiative in school education such as Nadu- Nedu and introduction of English as medium of instruction in government schools, the TDP leader said.

The students from primary to high school were facing hardship due to the government’s policies, he alleged.

“Merger of primary schools with high schools has resulted in closure of 8,000 schools. The report throws light on the government’s failures and fallacies,” he said.

“The decline in enrollment is quite high at 2.80 lakh. The average annual dropout rate at the secondary level in 2021 was quite high at 16.7%. The grade-wise annual average dropout rate at Class 10 is 31.3%. There are 39,008 vacant posts of teacher in the government elementary schools,” he said.