The Indian Express: Mumbai: Monday,
September 05, 2016.
THE DECLINING
number of students in schools run by the BMC is cause for concern among
officials, but for teachers offering education in some regional languages, it
is a serious threat.
According to
a reply to a RTI query by Praja Foundation, between 2010 and 2015, the
enrollment in Tamil schools has dropped from 9,431 to 6,065. For the same
period, the intake in Kannada schools reduced from 4,317 to 2,549 and in Telugu
schools it dipped from 3,260 to 2,062.
The declining
figures have forced some of the schools to shut down, rendering its teachers
‘surplus’ or extra. The Right to Education Act says a school should have two
teachers for 60 students. Teachers after this are declared surplus, and
adjusted in clerical jobs or transferred to other schools. Their woes, however,
have magnified with the state education department’s decision to implement a
‘no work, no pay’ rule for them.
“Employing us
in clerical positions is only a temporary solution,” said the teacher of a
Kannada-medium school in
Goregaon that has two surplus teachers. “The
key is to look at methods to improve the enrolment numbers,” he said. This
year, only six students were admitted to the primary section of her school and
12 in other classes.
“A Kannada
school teacher transferred to an English-medium school finds it difficult to
cope with the language barrier, especially when they have taught in Kannada for
many years,” another said.
The teacher
said migrants who hope to return to their states send their children to
vernacular-medium schools. “But they are not satisfied with the quality of
education, and hence pull their children,” he said.
A teacher in
an Aarey Road, school attributed the fall in demand for vernacular-medium
schools to the unavailability of secondary sections. “Even if a student takes
admission in the primary section of a Tamil school, after Class V she has to
switch to either a Marathi or an English-medium school,” she said.
However, the
BMC cannot set up secondary section schools unless there are enough students.
“Wherever these are available, we don’t hesitate to begin a new section,” said
Mahesh Palkar, Education Officer, BMC.
The teachers
agree that they need to improve their teaching techniques and work harder to
keep students in school. “A private school does much better than a BMC school
next door in terms of enrolment. This despite the subsidised fee and other
benefits offered by the BMC,” said another teacher from the Kannada school in
Goregaon.
The
private-aided, English-medium Andhra Education Society in Wadala has seen a
rise in enrolment in the past five years. The school offers Telugu as a
language. Narendra Varun, administrator of AES, said, “We attribute the rise to
the quality of education we offer.”
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