Punjab: Private school students opting for govt schools

Her classmates — Manveer Kaur, Pawan Preet Kaur, Jatindeep, Kaur, Navdeep Kaur, Sanjna Sharma, Luvpreet Singh, Pankaj — have also joined this school recently after leaving their private schools under CBSE. They all have scored above 80 per cent in Class 10.

All of them are now students of Dhada Fateh Singh Government Senior Secondary school, located in the rural hinterland of Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. The number of such students here is 343. The total strength of the school is now 920 students while it was 577 students last year.

Parwinder Singh and Jagwinder Kaur, both Class 3 and Class 5 students, are among 20 others who joined the government school Bhadra in Budladda block of Mansa district from a reputed private school of the area. Government Co-ed Multipurpose Senior Secondary School, Passi Road, Patiala has seen 900 students shift to it for the new session from private schools. The total strength of the school is 2800 students now.

“Now the government schools have changed. I visited Dadha school and found my son was getting the same things he was getting at his private school, but here there was no fee,” said Harjinder Singh of village Chakowal Brahmana, father of Nitin Singh , a Class 8 student who joined this school recently, adding that Nitin’s is more confident after joining the school. “Our children have a nice uniform, a school bus and their medium of study is English, what else we needed,” said Dr Balwinder Singh, father of Keshav, a Class 3 student.

The Punjab Education Department has launched several programmes to improve the infrastructure and education level in the government schools under “Smart School” and “Padho Punjab” projects. Much focus is on English subject, with several government schools being converted to English medium. The buildings are being revamped, with washrooms and educational parks being set up at around 3000 schools already. Over 19000 government schools have to be revamped under ‘Smart School’ project.

Secretary Punjab School Education, Krishan Kumar, had led a door-to-door campaign in run up to the new session in April, to bring more students to government schools.  In government schools there is no fee up to Class 8 and government provides free books, uniform along with midday meal. Students have to pay a fee Class 9 onwards.

“Our school was from class 6th to 12th and 200 students from reputed private schools got admission this year in all these classes. But then people from nearby villages forced us to start primary classes too which we started primary wing from this session in the four rooms available to us and admitted 148 new students from Pre-nursery classes to class 5th this session,” said Principal Salinder Singh of Dhada school, which is also a smart government school, adding that rush from private school students was too huge that we had to install a board of ‘no more vacant seat’ at our main gate. He said that all the 41 teachers of his school are too dedicated that the subject wise result of our students remained between 93 to 100% in recently declared class 10th and 12th result by Punjab School Education Board. School is running all streams including Science, Commerce, Humanities. The school has six school buses which they purchased from the contributions made by school teachers and area people under community service.

“Like my previous school, this school is offering English medium, well-qualified teachers and pick and drop facility in school bus and that too in just nominal fee of Rs 100 per month while I used to pay Rs 1900 fee per month in my previous school for the same facility,” said Harmanjot Singh, a Class 11 student.

Avneet’s father, Jagdeep Singh, said that for the “same quality of education here, I am not paying anything, whereas I was paying Rs1800 per month at the previous school. Tota Singh, principal of Multipurpose Co-ed Government Senior Secondary School in Patiala, said,” All our classrooms are digital and our students are connected online with their teachers.”

“We ask parents to visit the school before sending them,” said Secretary, Education, Krishan Kumar, adding: “We will reverse the perception that private schools are better as in board exams this year our school’s result was higher than private schools.”

“In almost every government school, students from private schools have sought admissions, somewhere less and at some place in hundreds,” he said about the change in perception already starting to kick in.