BMC decision: 72 schools with less than 10 students to be merged with nearby institutes

Earlier this year, the state government announced the merger and shutdown of around 1,300 zilla parishad schools that had less than 10 enrolment.

“We feel that the quality of education improves when there are higher number of students and there is a healthy competition among students. It also ensures inclusivity of children from the marginalised sections of the society,” said Palkar.

Civic schools are currently grappling with low enrolment, which has been consistently dropping. According to a study by the Praja Foundation, enrolments to the primary section of municipal schools saw a drop of 6.75 per cent in the academic year of 2016-17. The enrolment figures dropped from over 34,000 in 2015-16 to 32,218 the next year, with a time-series analysis predicting a further drop in enrolment (around 16,000 by 2021-22). The study also found that the dropout rate in semi-English schools was higher than that of the Mumbai Public Schools (MPS), which are the civic body’s English-medium schools, owing to a demand for English-medium schools.

There are 84 MPS across the city and most of them offer education up to Class VIII, for free. The enrolment in these schools has doubled, even as the other schools face shut down due to low enrolment. The BMC is now planning to leverage this by extending the schools up to Class X.

“More parents want to send their children to English-medium schools, so we are also planning to extend the classes in our Mumbai Public Schools up to Class X,” said Palkar. Between 2010 and 2015, the enrolment in Tamil schools has dropped from 9,431 to 6,065. In 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.