Die Hard Indian, Mumbai : Newsletter for July 2006
Something to think about – July 2006
Education in BMC schools – By Gaurang Damani
BMC runs a total of about 1185 primary schools in Mumbai. These schools take care of education needs of about 5.6 lakh students. But unfortunately the standard of education is so poor, that 22% of students in Class V are illiterate! This is also why about 54% of students dropped out of school between Class III and Class VII.
Why is the standard of education so low, when BMC employs the best B.Ed teachers with a starting salary of Rs 12,000 per month? The problem could be with the system itself. We have listed out some observations:
1. BMCs total budget is Rs 531 Crores and wages are 86% of it. BMC spends only Rs 1.9 crores on repairs of buildings and only Rs 30 lakhs on furniture. (Source – Times of India dated 18 Sept 2004). So understandably the study environment in schools is very poor.
2. In 2005, 6,334 and in 2006 only 6,096 students appeared for the SSC exams through government schools in Mumbai. The pass percentage was about 49%, but the main point was out of a total of Rs 5.6 lakh students in BMC schools, how is that only about 6,000 students reach SSC? Isnt that a startling drop-out rate!
3. Toilets are extremely dirty and badly designed. For example one floor may have one toilet with only 3-4 urinals whereas in a single recess about 100-150 children may need to use it. Students fall sick due to this and absenteeism also increases. This indirectly also puts burden on BMC hospitals.
4. Personal hygiene is lacking in children, especially dental hygiene. Our dental camp showed 45 children out of about 300 had severe dental problems.
5. Teachers are very well paid but have almost zero accountability. The school education improvement committee exists on paper only and is quite inactive. Improvement implementations are done on ad-hoc basis. Corporators are expected to attend but generally remain absent.
6. An NGO wanting to start a simple study room in a BMC school, has to get approval from 6-7 different departments and can take several months. The different departments for F-North Ward include CDO (Community Development Officer – Matunga); EO (Education Officer – Dadar); Special Projects Officer (Dadar); AO (Administrative Officer, Ghatkopar) and Building Incharge of the school. And papers may pass through the same department twice. Renewals do happen faster, but it also depends on the personal relationships.
7. NGOs cannot donate equipment directly to the school. For example we wanted to donate a water cooler to Sant Kakaiya school in Dharavi. The permission took months, by which time our donor disappeared.
8. Currently the state government runs secondary schools. Since these are far lesser in number compared to primary schools, a lot of children may drop out due to this reason.
Possible solutions:
1. Increase cleanliness in schools, especially in toilets. This would include complete re-design of toilets and appointing special staff for maintaining cleanliness.
2. Make the environment children-friendly. This would include painting the inside and outside of the schools. The painting can be partially funded and undertaken by NGOs. Volunteers from the local society can be asked to help, like Christmas in April in USA, which draws volunteers from the private sector, for such work.
3. Make education committees more powerful and through these committees make the teachers more accountable, through children performance in exams.
4. Generally bigger schools have a playground which in under-utilized. Try to allocate money for sporting activities for all round growth of children and also as a means to keep them in school.
5. Improve quality of mid-day meals by having more transparency and quality control on contractors.
6. The abyaas varg teachers are managed by NGOs with the co-ordination of the CDO. They generally are of good quality. More such balwadis and abyaas varg can be encouraged, by making it easier for NGOs to form and run them maybe by providing single-window clearance.
7. Balwadis are not compulsory under BMC schools, and are hence run by NGOs like Pratham. These are erratic in functioning as they collect money from the students directly and are also non-existent in a lot of schools. Making balwaadis compulsory will ensure that when children start proper schooling (Class I), they have a reasonably good study foundation.
8. Give tax breaks to private corporations and encourage them to adopt complete schools. It can be even considered to outsource certain functions to them, in order to increase efficiency and accountability.
Schools are very necessary for our society to flourish. Literacy will solve a lot of problems like poverty, so a lot of attention needs to be given to schools.
Email – damanig@diehardindian.com