19 govt schools don’t have a single student in Haryana

Gurgaon: A govt report released recently has found that 19 schools in the state do not have any student enrolled with them while 811 have one teacher each. A total of 3,148 schools have less than 50% students.

The report — which contained highlights of a meeting conducted by the Union education ministry’s project approval board in Feb this year — identified 14,562 govt schools in the state. The report was released in the second week of April.

The document also raised concerns about the lack of teachers, especially at the elementary level, and urged the govt to fill vacancies at the earliest. According to the report, vacancies for teachers at the elementary level have increased 11.1% since 2021-22. But posts for secondary teachers haven’t been filled since 2021-22.

The shortage of teachers has also affected central grants that are used to pay salaries. At the elementary level, for instance, the financial aid has come down to Rs 14 lakh from Rs 19 lakh in 2021-22. At the higher level too, grants have plunged from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 14 lakh as a number of posts are vacant.

The report also identified 31,068 out-of-school children from the state, who, it said, needed to be trained in formal education for the session 2024-25.

Apart from the shortage of teachers, the report also pointed to lack of basic infrastructure for students in these schools.

While the schools are 18% short of their target for additional classrooms, toilets for boys and girls are 1% and 1.8% fewer than what they should be. Smart classrooms are also 1.4% behind the required number.

“The benefits of digital education can be passed on to students only when these labs and smart classrooms start functioning. Labs are specially a cause for concern, more so because funds are being allocated for them every year,” said Sanjay Kumar, secretary (school and elementary education).

According to data, more than 50% of schools do not have integrated science labs, while 17.2% lack information and computer technology labs. A total 13% of schools do not have facilities for skill education. All these facilities are a must in keeping with the National Education Policy of 2020, which the state has already implemented.

The report stated, “With respect to previous non-recurring approvals, for which no action has been taken up by the state over the years, it was reiterated that as per the Samagra Shiksha framework these are committed liabilities which would become the sole responsibility of the state after a point of time i.e., 5 years after the approval.”

Kumar said schools that failed to implement facilities should surrender their earlier proposals and consider new ones. “The state govt has been instructed to update the status of pending work on the Prabandh portal on a regular basis to prevent any discrepancies in the reported data,” he added.


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