Inside the Government Primary School N.M. Guda, headmistress G. Sarala keeps shouting “Raja sit down, Raja sit down.” But the boy is a bundle of energy and keeps moving around in the classroom where the only furniture is a chair and table for the teacher.
The children sit on woven mats. The other children try to focus on writing notes. The classroom-cum-HM’s room also has a black steel trunk marked as the library and a couple of books hanging on a string. The school is among the 3,146 government facilities with 68,3205 students on rolls in the city.
No toilets
But 100 schools don’t have toilets for girls, 32 don’t have toilets for boys, there is no water supply in 49, and 219 schools don’t have electricity supply. However, the State has made remarkable progress in the pupil-teacher ratio. While the RTE norm is 40, Telangana has an overall ratio of 23. This may look rosy statistically but it is due to the fact that more number of students pursue education in private schools in the State. More teachers and more government schools but more students in private schools. Out of 42,575 schools in the State, 70.5% are run by the government, and out of 3,05,597 teachers, 49.8% are government school teachers. But, out of 69,37,640 students, only 40.9% study in government schools, and 57.4 % in private schools.
While Telangana has leapt in indices of development, business, IT growth, and water supply, it has not matched the pace in the education sector. For the last two years, enrolment in government schools has surged due to COVID-induced economic distress. While a large number of private schools have shut down, many parents have enrolled their children in government schools unable to pay accumulated fees.
“We had to turn away students who came for admission,” informs Zahed Ali, in-charge of the Laad Bazaar Government School. While the school had 340 students in 2019, now 457 students are using the same facility of 18 classrooms. The school functions in two shifts to cater to the needs of the students.
Other schools have devised a similar system. At the Dareeche Bawaheer, the primary school functions till 12.30 p.m., and after that the high school students step in. The high school staff lock up the toilets so that the primary students don’t use them. They have four usable and eight unusable toilets.
Pooled money
“Ayamma motor chalu karo, pani nah ara,” says a girl holding the grill of the headmaster’s room. Then, Shahzadi Begum, the ayah, steps out to throw a switch. She gets ₹2,500 per month for her work. “There is no staffer for cleaning and maintaining the school and the facilities. We collect ₹200 per month to pay the ayah and cleaning staff,” informs Abdul Majeed, the HM of the school.
Teachers at other government schools also reported similar instances of pooled money to pay the cleaning and maintenance staff. At the Hyderguda Government School, children hold the door or wait outside while their classmates use the toilets. “Girls don’t need urinals,” said one HM when asked about fewer toilets for girls. Not surprisingly, there have been no direct appointments and no promotions.
The stasis in hiring new teachers and improvement in facilities is linked to investment in education. “The State has, however, been persistently trailing in respect of expenditure on Education and Health, compared to other General States. This was reported in the State Finances Audit Reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in the earlier years also. In fact, the gap between General States and Telangana is increasing, which could be a matter of concern from the social perspective,” said the Comptroller and Auditor General in its report.
Social workers tracking the education sector say the budget for education has shrunk in Telangana. From 10.88% allocation for education, it has shrunk to 6.26%, which is one of the lowest in the country. And it shows.
According to Unified District Information System For Education (UDISE) data, Hyderabad has 100 schools without toilets for girls, Adilabad has 142 schools without toilets for girls, and Nalgonda has 90 schools without toilets for girls. Nalgonda has 357 schools without electricity, Adilabad 153, and Hyderabad 219.
One of the policy decisions announced as part of Budget 2022-23 to fight the ‘learning loss’ among children due to the pandemic is to start TV channels to help all students. If dozens of schools are without electricity, the utility of a rollout of such a programme is easy to guess. The State also has the State Institute of Education Technology (SIET) that creates and transmits digital lessons through Doordarshan and T-SAT Vidya classes.
Outside the HM’s room of Majeedia Girls High School at Chintal Basti, digital equipment worth ₹17 lakh is stacked in the corridor. The equipment donated through MPLAD’s fund should be part of the digital classes. “Initially I refused. There are no classrooms. Now we have to spare two classrooms for conducting these classes,” says Sharada, the in-charge HM.
Corridor turns classroom
The HM’s room has a cupboard filled with tabs that were used for online classes by students. The school has 10 classrooms but requires 15. Result: the corridor has been converted into classrooms. With higher class strength, the school conducts high school in the morning and primary classes in the evening. It is also one of the rare schools where the enrolment has remained constant. “Many children have become daily wage labourers due to COVID lockdown. Skills like reading and writing have been lost. Their parents are pushing them to work,” informs the HM.
The Telangana State Statistical Abstract spotlights zero dropout rate among primary schoolchildren. However, the Annual Status of Education Report logs Telangana as one of the big States with highest percentage of children in 6-14 age group who are not enrolled. In 2018, the State had 0.6% children who were not enrolled. The number jumped to 4.4% in the first year of lockdown and in 2021, it was a whopping 11.8%. Jayashankar district had the dubious distinction of having a dropout rate of 29.49%.
Education is on the concurrent list of the Constitution with the Central Government sharing partial responsibility for the subject. According to 2021 CAG Report: “The 15th Finance Commission recommended an amount of ₹171 crore as Grants for Nutrition to Telangana. The State did not receive such Grants for Nutrition during the year.” While mid-day meal is the norm in government schools, most children have to squat down on the floor or mats. This, at a time when enrolment in government schools went up by 2,35,439. In 2017, there were 41,337 schools in the State. In 2021, the number dipped to 41,220 as a number of schools in private sector shut down.
In a strange irony, Hyderabad has the lowest number of government schools per lakh population: 20. In comparison, Kumaram Bheem district has 160 schools per lakh, which is nearly twice that of the State average of 84 schools per lakh population.
The biggest hope in the school education sector is the Mana Ooru-Mana Badi/Mana Basti-Mana Badi programme with an outlay of ₹7,289.54 crore, a 19% jump in provisioning for the sector. However, the State allocation for the sector is 6.26% of the total budget for 2022-23. This is nearly half of the provisioning of other States which average 15.2%. This has been part of the trend for the last few years. In 2016-17, the State spent 8.2% on education which was lowest in comparison to AP with 15.1% and Maharashtra 18%.
So, how will this money be used for improving the infrastructure? “A number of schools have been shortlisted (9,123). Infrastructure like walls, classrooms, toilets, and furniture will be improved with this. We aim to cover 100% schools in three years,” said K. Lingaiah, Additional Director of School Education Department.
But the elephant in the room is the shift to English medium for school education. Parents, teachers, and children are yet to understand how this shift will take place. “Retention, comprehension, and grasping are higher in mother tongue. Teachers in urban areas are prepared. Some of them have undergone a five-day course for the changeover. But is the short course enough?” asks one teacher unwilling to go on record.
“The plan is simple. All government schools will now offer English medium classes. Children can choose to continue in their mother tongue or switch to English. We are having a four-week programme to train teachers,” informed Mr. Lingaiah.
