Renewed attempt by Telangana government to rationalise schools to boost student strength

Hyderabad: Proposal to rationalisation of schools in Telangana has picked up momentum as the hundreds of schools fail to have a minimum strength of students. However, earlier, similar attempts were faced stiff resistance from the students' organisation and political parties alleging that the State government is shutting down government schools paving way for the private schools to come up.

According to the sources in the State Education Department (SED), it is for the second or third attempt by the State government to rationalise schools to ensure each school has sufficient strength of viability. Otherwise, there are hundreds of teachers who do not have sufficient work to do and thus wasting resources.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official in the SED said, to run a sports competition like Kabaddi for students in a school, it needs a minimum of 10 players. While seven players have to take the ground at a time, the remaining are kept on standby.

There are about 6,000 schools run under various managements like Zilla Parishad, Mandal Parishad, School Education Department. But, "In all these schools there is no strength to form two Kabaddi teams to conduct the sports event. However, the schools have teachers forming a pupil-teacher ratio of 1-1 or a maximum of 1-4 or 5," he added.

Not appointing teachers on a regular basis for a long time has led to engaging Vidya Volunteers on a part-time basis depending on the requirement of teachers to teach special subjects like sciences, mathematics, and others in schools where there is more strength facing a shortage of teachers.

Against this backdrop, this time, the SED is trying to impress upon the State government to implement the rationalisation of schools for optimum utilisation of the services of the teachers. Once this is done, then, the exact situation can be assessed, the sources said.

Further, "unless this exercise is done, we won't be in a position to reach a level to start new schools wherever there is a demand with sufficient catchment of the student population," the official said.