Rise in the enrollment of students at BBMP schools after four years

Bengaluru: After the student strength had dropped at the 156 Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). Its strength at the schools and colleges have been increased by almost a thousand from 15,530 last year to 16,493 this year.

It is low when compared to the number of students who have enrolled in 2014, 17,300. It is certainly an improvement for the civic body’s institutions, which lack adequate facilities. Shortage of permanent teachers is a perennial problem here, while lower-than-average examination results have stopped shocking anyone. 

The rise in the number of students also shows how teachers can make a difference not just within classrooms, but elsewhere too. Their efforts at conducting awareness drives to draw more students are highly laudable. While teachers are doing their bit, it’s imperative that the civic agency and the government address all concerns that plague these institutions.

“This year’s rise in student strength is due to an intensive awareness drive carried out by our teachers. Many people did not know that corporation schools provide so many facilities and items free of cost and that the fees are minimal. We took many proactive measures to ensure they were made aware of this,” said SG Raveendra, special commissioner, education.

However, many of these free items like bags, shoes, uniforms, textbooks and notebooks are often handed out to the students well into the academic year, instead of at the beginning. “There are quite a few slums nearby, and we spoke to parents there and told them about all the facilities we were providing for free. However, there are no BBMP high schools in the neighbourhood, so once our students grow older, they opt for private schools,” said Sujatha SP, principal of the BBMP Nursery School in Rajajinagar.

“When our school was set up, there were many slums around, and children from these slums enrolled with us. After the area developed and the Metro came up, these slums were shifted elsewhere and so there was a decline in enrolment. This March we started our drive, which included locating dropouts, and our student strength has increased since,” said Ganesh V Bhandari, the principal of BBMP High School in Gandhinagar.

School infrastructure though is likely to be improved through Roshini, a CSR project that had been undertaken by Microsoft and Tech Avant-Garde. Through the project, the Microsoft Aspire Student Program will be implemented for all corporation schools. Over time, the schools can boast of state-of the art technology such as an augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence apart from the cloud and Internet of Things (IoT).