Hyderabad: While the Supreme Court’s expert panel is touring Telangana state to find the reasons for over 400 government schools running with “zero enrolments” and facing closure this year, the state government is busy preparing a report for the panel that over 4,000 government schools have poor enrolment and need to be closed down this year.

The Supreme Court rapped the TS government last month for its proposal to close over 400 schools and constituted an expert panel to tour TS to find out the reasons. The panel started its two-day tour of the districts on Thursday.

But the government wants to bring to the notice of the Supreme Court panel that it wants to close over 4,000 schools with poor enrolment as it has became economically unviable to run them, and take up clubbing of schools this year to increase enrolment in the remaining schools.

Clubbing only option, feels Telangana government

The TS government is preparing for the Supreme Court’s expert panel that over 4,000 government schools have poor enrolment and need to be closed down this year.

As per existing norms, the minimum enrolment required to run a school is 60 students and it would be both financially and operationally unviable to run a school below this enrolment.

As per data gathered by the school education department, there are 12,178 schools in the state which have enrolment of less than 60. These schools need to be clubbed with nearby schools to make them viable, which will lead to the closure of 4,481 schools.

“The clubbing of schools is a must to save the government schools from closure. This process should not be viewed as closure but rationalisation of schools to utilise the services of teachers and infrastructure facilities to the maximum possible extent for the benefit of students. If we allow all the existing schools to continue irrespective of their enrolment, they will not serve any purpose and crores of rupees of public money will go down the drain as salaries would have to be paid to staff every month, besides incurring unnecessary maintenance and operational costs like free textbooks, free uniforms and free midday meals,” said Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari who holds the education portfolio.

As per existing norms, there should be a teacher for every subject in high schools. With this, six subject teachers qualified in B.Ed/M.Ed. are being wasted for each class if the school has enrolments of less than 60. In some schools, it was found that there were more teachers than students. The government has asked district collectors to prepare reports on schools with poor enrolment and submit them to the SC panel.