Students inch away from govt schools, which stand neglected

District lags in implementation of infrastructure facilities

Due to competition from unaided schools and lack of fundamental facilities, government schools in the district are slowly losing their appeal. A lacklustre progress of developmental works of schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyana shows a lack of enthusiasm from the Department of Public Instruction in implementing developmental activities in schools of the district.

During the year 2011-12, construction of 205 girls toilet’s in government schools were taken up. However, two years after the works started, only 162 toilets have been completed. Statistics of the number of girl’s toilets taken up in the year 2012-13 were not available.

Among other works for the development of government schools, a total of 110 schools were selected by the department in 2012-13, to provide additional class rooms for schools that were upgraded till class eight. A meagre 10 per cent of the works, (only 12 rooms) had been completed, as of May 8.

A total of 27 class rooms were sanctioned to cope with the intake of students in government primary schools in rural areas. Only one of them has been completed.
Of the 66 schools, that were listed for major repair works, works have been complete in only 12 of these schools.

Though the department had set a target of building 7,365 metres of compound around schools in the district, only 3,599 metres of compound was constructed; which is a progress of 48.87 per cent. A good number of schools still do not have a compound in the district.

As a sign of decline in interest and in-take in government schools in Mysore city, only three additional class rooms were sanctioned for government schools in the city, of which not even one has been constructed.

Student-teacher ratio

As many as 4,53,411 students are attending schools this year in the district. The total number of teachers working  in the district are 17,691, though the number of sanctioned posts are 19,336. A total of 871 posts of teachers are vacant in all schools of the district.

There are 2,149 government schools in the district, where 2,22,456 students are studying. Of the 10,780 sanctioned posts for teachers in government schools, 9,909 of them have been filled.

Drop Outs

Despite efforts by the Centre and the State to prevent drop-out of children from schools, 2.73 per cent of students dropped out of school in primary level, 3.01 per cent dropped out in upper primary level, while 6.26 per cent of them dropped out in the secondary level in the district last year.

Though it is known that the government schools are losing ground, statistics show that the Department of Public Instruction too has not stepped up to the task of improving infrastructure facilities in schools, driving students towards aided and un-aided educational institutes.