By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Despite opposition from academicians, teachers and other stakeholders, the state department of primary and secondary education is silently gathering the list of government schools to merge, which would result in their shutting down. As per information available from the sources in the department, the district-wise data of schools that have been identified to be merged is ready and the documents available with Express lists over 14,000 such schools.

As it was mentioned in the recent budget, over 28,000 government and aided schools were to be merged. Merged is a jargon used in government-speak for closure. Now, the department is ready with the district-wise list of government schools for merger. The data says, over 14,712 schools have been identified for merging citing less admissions and proximity to other governm ent schools, which fall within 1 km radius.

Ironically, the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister’s native districts stand to lose the highest and second-highest number of schools through these mergers! In these over 14,000 schools, 25,231 teachers work in total.

Officials surprised by budget figure

The announcement made by CM HD Kumaraswamy in his budget about merging of 28,000 plus schools triggered a controversy as the officials in the department themselves were surprised with that data and were not sure from where that data had reached the budget book. Going by that data, the department had to close down half the government schools in the state.