No more single teacher schools
"Parents had earlier protested the amalgamation of these schools with low enrolment with neighbouring schools with more students as they feared this will lead to transportation issues. So we were planning to merge such schools in a few areas in Tiswadi on an experimental basis. Now since we are providing these schools with transportation under a state scheme, this problem will not arise. We will now merge these low enrolment schools," Monserrate said.
He said that as per his announcement during the last assembly session one English teacher will be provided to all such primary schools which will also help improve the quality of education in the schools.
"Single teacher schools function from one or two classrooms and most often a first standard student can hear what the teacher is teaching the fourth standard. This will not happen from now on," Monserrate said.
The number of government primary schools with less than 15 students has been steadily increasing over the last two years.
While government primary schools with low enrolment stood at 172 in 2008, 210 schools were reported to have low enrolments in 2009. This number went up to 253 in June 2010.
The department of education had first decided to temporarily shut down government primary schools with low enrolment, but had to rethink the decision and decided to rework on improving enrolment after parent teacher associations objected stating that students would have to travel longer distances to reach the other primary schools in the locality.
Thereafter, a decision was taken to merge low enrolment primary schools only in tiswadi taluka with neighbouring government primary schools on an experimental basis from June 2010.
This proposal was also hit by opposition from parents who said that the neighbouring schools are too far away for students to walk to everyday.
After amalgamation of the low enrolment schools now, the schools will be shown as temporarily closed until the school's enrolment improves. Closing a school means that the process to reopen the schools if the enrolment improves is much more tedious for doe. As per the annual statistics collected by the ministry of human resource development (hrd) goa has one of the highest percentages of single teacher primary schools and the situation has only been worsening over the years. If the percentage of single teacher schools was 21.37 for 2008-09, it rose to 24.58% in 2009-10. Over 12% of these single teacher schools in goa have between 15 and 24 students studying in them.
The national average of single teacher schools at the elementary level has been pegged at a little over 10%.
Goa's problem of single teacher schools is directly linked to its enrolment since, according to the state's education rules, schools get one teacher for up to 24 students. Most government schools, due to low enrolment, are not provided administrative staff and headmasters, forcing teachers to multitask.
Courtesy : The Times Of India
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