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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/schools-have-no-room-to-grow-shreya-roy-chowdhury-23371.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Schools have no room to grow -Shreya Roy Chowdhury | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Schools have no room to grow -Shreya Roy Chowdhury
-The Times of India


NEW DELHI: About 54% of school principals in Delhi have postgraduate degrees and over 77% have less than a decade of work experience, found government-authorized "5% sample checking of Delhi DISE (District Information System for Education) data" over 2012-2013. The study, which covers 258 of Delhi's schools (municipal, government, private-aided and unaided), has found over 1,100 vacant teaching posts in just the schools covered by the survey. And, despite enrolment increasing every year, schools are bursting at the seams-59.3% have no room to expand.

Private-unaided schools form a large chunk, 35.3%, of the schools surveyed.

The only parameter fulfilled by all schools seems to be availability of toilets: every school had one. But there are gaps in every other area; there are still schools, in the central and southwest A districts, that are without electricity connections; and schools that are operating without pucca structures in the northeast and south.

"While 98.4% of schools had pucca boundary walls, 0.8% had pucca but broken ones and 0.8% had no boundary wall at all," says the report.

While even the basics aren't in place everywhere, facilities such as libraries and health checks are missing in even more institutions: 20% of north schools are without libraries and 16.7% in New Delhi. Keeping abreast of current-affairs has lower priority-of the schools surveyed, 44.2% do not subscribe to any newspaper or magazines; 26.5% are without playgrounds; 50.8% without ramps for the disabled; and 11.4% of elementary section (classes I to VIII) classrooms have no furniture. Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) hasn't been implemented at elementary level in 28.6% schools.

Like at every level of education, there's a large number of vacancies. Among the 258 schools, there are 1,143 teaching positions vacant-the northeast district is worst in this respect with 268 vacancies, followed by northwest A with 183. Of the 929 contract teachers, 695 were appointed for primary and upper-primary sections. Record-keeping itself needs work. Sharing feedback on the survey, investigators found only about 16% schools had full sets of records available with them. Investigators reported that 65.9% principals were not able to give "enrolment and other details from a single register" or "percentages."