292 high schools upgraded as high schools-plus for girls

Guntur: The state government upgraded the existing 292 high schools across the state into high schools with Intermediate courses for girl students from the academic year 2022-23 to check girl student dropout rate at the Intermediate level.

According to sources in the Board of Intermediate Education, girl students of poor BC, SC, ST, Minority and EBC families are not joining the Intermediate courses due to financial problems. Their finance position is not allowing them to be admitted to junior colleges in the nearest towns. In order to check girl student dropout rate, the government has upgraded the existing 286 zilla parishad high schools as high school-plus and started Intermediate courses in rural areas. Similarly, six high schools were upgraded as high school-plus in urban areas in the state. Commissioner of school education S Suresh Kumar issued a GO to this effect on Wednesday.

The highest number of 22 high schools were upgraded into high school-plus is in Krishna district, and only one school was upgraded into high school-plus in Vizianagaram district.

Admissions were completed in the Intermediate first year in the high school-plus. The government had already extended midday meal facility to the intermediate students to check dropout rate at that level.

At present, eligible school teachers working in high schools are teaching lessons in some of the high schools-plus. But there is the need to fill vacancies in all the high schools-plus. So far there is no clarity on whether the government will fill vacancies of lecturer posts in the high schools-plus on contract basis or outsourcing basis.

APTF state president G Hrudaya Raju and general secretary S Chiranjeevi in a statement demanded the government to promote eligible physical education teachers as physical education directors. Similarly, he also demanded the government to promote eligible secondary grade teachers as lecturers in high schools-plus.

The Municipal Teachers Federation state president S Rama Krishna said, "There is a need to upgrade more high schools into high schools-plus to facilitate the poor girl students in the urban areas to join in intermediate courses. The girl students are not coming forward to join the Intermediate courses in high schools-plus in the rural areas because there is no sufficient faculty."